60 free Taekwondo trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 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 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Taekwondo is a martial art from which country?
Korea
In 2018 the South Korean government formally designated it the national martial art.
Q 02What does the 'tae' in taekwondo mean?
Strike with foot
Kwon is the hand strike and do the art or way, so the whole name is roughly 'the way of foot and fist'.
Q 03Which body part does taekwondo emphasise above all others?
The legs, through kicking
Head-height, jumping and spinning kicks are its signature, and Olympic rules award extra points for spinning kicks to the head.
Q 04What 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 05What is a taekwondo training hall called?
Dojang
It is the Korean cousin of the Japanese dojo, both written with characters meaning 'place of the way'.
Q 06What 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 07Which weapon-free rule applies to taekwondo?
It is primarily a bare-hand art with no swords or nunchaku
Individual schools sometimes add staff or knife drills, but the major federations keep weapons out of the formal curriculum.
Q 08In which decades was taekwondo developed by Korean martial artists?
The 1940s and 1950s
Its founders had trained in karate and Chinese martial arts; the sport-oriented Olympic style came later, in the early 1970s.
Q 09What were the post-1945 Korean martial arts schools that gave rise to taekwondo called?
Kwans
Nine original schools opened in Seoul after the Japanese occupation ended, and their representatives founded the Korea Taekwondo Association in 1959.
Q 10Which South Korean president pushed for a single unified martial art after a 1952 demonstration?
Syngman Rhee
He mistook what he saw for an older folk art, a confusion that helped shape the new name.
Q 11Before 'taekwondo' caught on, what name was commonly used for Korean karate?
Tang Soo Do
It used the Korean reading of the same Chinese characters as karate; a Hollywood action star later built his own American style on it.
Q 12Which army general is credited by the ITF as the founder of taekwondo?
Choi Hong-hi
He proposed the name in 1955, went into exile in Canada in 1972 and later took the art to North Korea, which is why rival bodies leave him out of their histories.
Q 13On what date does the ITF say the name Taekwon-Do was chosen?
11 April 1955
The general had argued for replacing 'su' (hand) with 'kwon' (fist), which also brought the name closer to the sound of an old Korean folk art.
Q 21At which Games did taekwondo become a full Olympic medal sport?
Sydney 2000
The IOC had voted it in at its 1994 session in Paris; it was a demonstration sport again in Barcelona in 1992.
Q 22How many Olympic weight classes are contested for each sex in taekwondo?
Four
World Championships use eight divisions, which are condensed for the Games.
Q 23Which martial arts shared the Tokyo 2020 programme with taekwondo as its only Asian ones?
Judo and karate
The other Olympic combat sports at Tokyo 2020 were boxing, Greco-Roman wrestling and freestyle wrestling; karate did not return for Paris 2024.
Q 14Where did the ITF's founder die in 2002, receiving a state funeral?
Pyongyang, North Korea
He had defected to the North in 1979 after Seoul refused to let his federation teach there.
Q 15In which year was the International Taekwon-Do Federation founded?
1966
Choi broke with the Korean association to institutionalise his own Chang Hon style; the ITF later split into three federations with the same name.
Q 16Why did the WTF drop the F from its initials in 2017?
Its acronym had become internet slang
The organisation had carried the initials since its founding at the Kukkiwon in 1973.
Q 17What is the Kukkiwon?
Taekwondo's central academy and headquarters in Seoul
It stands in Gangnam and has kept a permanent demonstration team since 1974; it also issues dan certificates worldwide.
Q 18The first World Taekwondo Championships in May 1973 drew how many countries?
17
Two hundred athletes competed at the brand-new Kukkiwon; by 2023 World Taekwondo had 213 member nations.
Q 19Who was the first president of the World Taekwondo Federation?
Kim Un-yong
An IOC vice-president who helped Seoul land the 1988 Games, he was later jailed for embezzlement and bribery.
Q 20At which Olympics did taekwondo first appear, as a demonstration sport?
Seoul 1988
The opening ceremony included a mass display of hundreds of adults and children performing moves in unison.
Q 24How many points does a spinning kick to the head score under World Taekwondo rules?
5
A plain kick to the body is worth 2 and a punch to the chest protector 1; head kicks with a spin were raised from 4 to 5 points in 2018.
Q 25What is the chest protector worn in WT sparring called?
Hogu
Modern versions are electronic, registering the strength and location of kicks so that human judges only score punches and spinning techniques.
Q 26How long is an Olympic taekwondo match?
Three two-minute rounds
A tie sends the fighters into a sudden-death 'golden point' round after a minute's rest.
Q 27What is a penalty called in WT taekwondo sparring?
Gam-jeom
Each one adds a point for the opponent, and ten of them mean an automatic loss.
Q 28Which strike is banned in Olympic (WT) taekwondo but allowed under ITF rules?
Punches to the head
WT punches must be straight-armed shots to the chest protector; ITF sparring is not full contact and disqualifies anyone who knocks out an opponent.
Q 29What are the formal patterns of taekwondo called in the Kukkiwon/WT style?
Poomsae
The ITF calls its patterns tul; both fill the role that kata plays in karate.
Q 30How many patterns, or tul, did the ITF's founder define for his Chang Hon style?
24
Their names and symbolism refer to Korean history, culture and religious philosophy.