Taekwondo Trivia
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52 free Taekwondo trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This taekwondo trivia quiz follows Korea's national martial art from the post-war kwans of Seoul to electronic head-guards at the Olympics. The history questions cover the 1952 army demonstration that convinced Syngman Rhee, the 1955 naming, General Choi Hong-hi's founding of the ITF and defection to North Korea, the Kukkiwon and the World Taekwondo Federation, and the acronym problem that forced a rename in 2017. Then the art itself: what dobok, dojang, poomsae, geup and hogu mean, the five tenets, the eight taegeuk forms and their I Ching trigrams, Choi's Theory of Power and sine wave, and how a punch, a body kick and a spinning head kick score under WT and ITF rules. The champions section runs from Steven López, Hadi Saei and Wu Jingyu to Jade Jones, and includes the first-ever Olympic medals for Gabon and Jordan, Tonga's oiled flag-bearer and Kimia Alizadeh's refugee-team appearance. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on taekwondo, its federations, forms and individual athletes, and each explanation adds one detail worth remembering. BrainPickle has separate quizzes on karate, judo and martial arts in general.
30 of 52 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which heavyweight boxing champion credited a taekwondo master's 'Accupunch' for his final knockout win?
Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali: he learned the fast, no-warning punch from the master in the mid-1970s and used it to stop Britain's Richard Dunn in 1976.
Q 02What do taekwondo students traditionally wear on their feet in class?
Nothing
Nothing: students train barefoot, but Olympic fighters pull on thin socks fitted with sensors so the electronic scoring system can register their kicks.
Q 03What is the taekwondo uniform called?
Dobok
The name simply means 'way clothing'; the wide sleeves and trousers set it apart from the Japanese keikogi it descends from.
Q 04What is a taekwondo training hall called?
Dojang
Dojang: the Korean counterpart of the Japanese dojo, it is where students traditionally bow to show mutual respect.
Q 05What is the taekwondo term for board-breaking?
Gyeokpa
Demonstrations extend the idea to bricks, tiles and blocks of ice, and competitions split it into power, speed and special-technique breaks.
Q 06Which country's taekwondo fighter was banned for life after kicking a referee in the face at Beijing 2008?
Cuba
Cuba's Ángel Matos, disqualified for overrunning his injury time in a bronze-medal bout, kicked the Swedish referee and was banned for life along with his coach.
Q 07Cheick Sallah Cissé won Rio 2016 taekwondo gold with a head kick in the final second for which country?
Ivory Coast
Ivory Coast's Cissé trailed Britain's Lutalo Muhammad until his last-second head kick won the final 8–6.
Q 08What were the 1940s Korean martial arts schools that gave rise to taekwondo called?
Kwans
Kwans opened in Seoul and Kaesong in the 1940s, and their leaders spent years merging them into one Korean art under the Korea Taekwondo Association.
Q 09Which South Korean president urged the army to adopt one martial art after a 1950s military demonstration?
Syngman Rhee
Syngman Rhee watched an officer smash 13 roof tiles with a punch and was so impressed that he ordered martial arts training for all military personnel.
Q 10Left off Britain's 2012 Olympic team, taekwondo star Aaron Cook fought at Rio 2016 for which country bordering Romania?
Moldova
Moldova took him on after he broke with GB Taekwondo, but he lost 14–2 in his first bout in Rio.
Q 11Jailed for plotting against the Japanese army, future taekwondo pioneer Choi Hong-hi was freed by what?
Korea's liberation
Korea's liberation at the end of the Second World War set him free, and he rose quickly through South Korea's new army to become a general.
Q 12At Beijing 2008, why was Sarah Stevenson's quarterfinal loss to the defending champion overturned?
A missed scoring kick
A missed scoring kick was the reason: judges failed to register her head kick in the final seconds, but a protest reversed the result and Stevenson went on to win bronze.
Q 13Where did the ITF's founder die of stomach cancer in 2002?
Pyongyang, North Korea
Q 21How does an Olympic taekwondo coach ask for a video replay?
By holding up a card
By holding up a card: a coach normally gets just one per match and keeps it only if the challenge succeeds, so a failed review leaves them with no more replays.
Q 22Which football striker, famed for acrobatic goals, holds an honorary taekwondo black belt?
Zlatan Ibrahimović
Zlatan Ibrahimović: he took taekwondo classes as a boy in Malmö, and that training is widely credited for his overhead kicks and mid-air volleys.
Q 23What is the chest protector worn in WT sparring called?
Hogu
Hogu at World Taekwondo events are electronic, registering the force and location of kicks, so a kick below the set impact level scores nothing.
Pyongyang is where he died, after visits in the 1980s in which he brought ITF taekwondo to North Korea.
Q 14What happened to South Korea's Olympic taekwondo team for the first time in 2021?
It won no gold medals
It won no gold medals: the country that invented the sport left the Games with a silver and two bronzes, while seven other nations shared the eight titles.
Q 15Why did the WTF drop the F from its initials in 2017?
Its acronym had become internet slang
Its acronym had become internet slang, but World Taekwondo's new logo kept the kicking athlete that had formed the T in WTF.
Q 16Which actor plays a small-town taekwondo instructor in the low-budget comedy The Foot Fist Way?
Danny McBride
Danny McBride: the film premiered at Sundance in 2006 and reached cinemas two years later, after fans Will Ferrell and Adam McKay championed it.
Q 17Taekwondo performers from North and South Korea shared a stage just before which Olympics' opening ceremony?
PyeongChang 2018
PyeongChang 2018: the performers came from the sport's two rival world bodies, and later that night athletes from both countries marched in together behind a single flag.
Q 18Who was the first president of the World Taekwondo Federation?
Kim Un-yong
Kim Un-yong, later an IOC vice-president, was jailed in 2004 for embezzlement and bribery, though the judge cited his worldwide promotion of taekwondo in easing the sentence.
Q 19Besides Seoul 1988, at which Olympics was taekwondo a demonstration sport?
Barcelona 1992
Barcelona 1992 kept taekwondo as a demonstration sport, and in 1994 the IOC voted it onto the medal programme for Sydney 2000.
Q 20At Rio 2016, Olympic taekwondo swapped its square mat for which shape?
Octagon
Octagon: the sport's world body wanted livelier, more continuous fights for TV audiences, and at the same Games let fighters walk out to music of their choice.
Q 24Which future UFC champion, a taekwondo black belt, landed the off-the-cage 'Showtime kick' in 2010?
Anthony Pettis
Anthony Pettis: late in the final round he ran up the cage wall, pushed off and kicked Benson Henderson to the mat, winning the last WEC title fight.
Q 25What is a penalty called in WT taekwondo sparring?
Gam-jeom
Gam-jeom each add a point to the opponent's score, and under the rules World Taekwondo used from 2017, a fighter who collected ten lost the bout.
Q 26Which strike is banned in Olympic (WT) taekwondo but allowed under ITF rules?
Punches to the head
Punches to the head hand the opponent a point as a penalty in World Taekwondo sparring, while ITF rules allow them.
Q 27What are the formal patterns of taekwondo called in the Kukkiwon/WT style?
Poomsae
Poomsae are tested at belt gradings, and moving up from one dan rank to the next means learning new ones.
Q 28On which TV talent show did World Taekwondo's demonstration team win a Golden Buzzer in 2021?
America's Got Talent
America's Got Talent: host Terry Crews hit the Golden Buzzer after their board-smashing audition, sending the team straight through to the live shows.
Q 29Kukkiwon taekwondo's eight taegeuk forms each link to a trigram from which classic text?
The I Ching
The I Ching trigrams each give one form its theme, and students learn all eight taegeuk forms on the way to black belt before starting Koryo.
Q 30What are junior, coloured-belt ranks called in taekwondo?
Geup
Geup ranks count down towards black belt, after which dan ranks count upwards, and under-15s who pass the black-belt test hold a poom grade instead.