WTF vs. ITF Taekwondo

Many people training in Taekwondo for the first time are unaware there is a different style of Taekwondo and usually end up asking the committee/instructors – so to solve this problem we have created a page dedicated to this long ended question…

 What is the difference?

The main difference you encounter as a student training in Taekwondo for the first time will be negligible.  Please bare in mind that WTF and ITF are merely organisations under which instruction is organised: WTF standing for ‘World Taekwondo Federation’ and ITF standing for ‘International Taekwondo Federation’.  These are two organisations or groups that diverged long ago at the inception of Taekwondo for many political reasons.

As a student, none of the politics will concern you.  The only differences you will encounter will be slight differences in training and emphasis, which mainly results from different rules of sparring at competitions.

The BASIC (and crude) rule that we have found to explain to new students is that ITF Taekwondo is more akin to what people would expect of Kickboxing, simply with better kicking thrown in. ITF Taekwondo allows punches to the head/face whereas WTF does not.  The reason for this basic divergence is a difference in philosophy and application:

Whereas ITF Taekwondo hopes to make an all round fighter out of a practitioner at once, practicing all strikes and attacks from the very beginning, WTF hopes to preserve the ancient Korean belief that the foot is the more powerful striking weapon of the body.  So in WTF Taekwondo all other attacks are discouraged in order to encourage the practitioner to become extremely proficient in kicking ability alone. For close fighting and hand combinations, many practitioners of WTF Taekwondo also study ‘Hapkido’ – another Korean martial art that is often considered Taekwondo’s sister art (and vice versa). Also past black belt WTF emphasises hand techniques and rivals most arts in its proficiency – that Taekwondo doesn’t use hands is an erroneous belief coming from many students who gave up before, or failed to reach black belt or above.

As a result Sparring between the styles looks completely different, even down to the protection worn.  ITF tends to wear head-guard, gloves, feet/shin pads and groin guard.  WTF on the other hand wears one large chest guard and forearm protectors along with head-guard and groin guard. 

The padding partly influences and is in part influenced by another crucial difference between the styles.  Whereas ITF is in many cases ‘semi-contact’ (striking at full power is not allowed) only until a very high level – WTF is full contact from beginner onwards. As a result the pads in WTF are different: they are ‘meatier’ and thicker to stop ribs and arms being broken whereas in ITF this is not so necessary. 

Other points of interest for beginners is that WTF is often considered the more ‘flashy’ style with its emphasis on high kicks and impressive combinations. This is one of the reasons it was so quickly adopted as an Olympic Sport.

Also, a black belt in ITF is generally considered to be obtainable within 3-5 years – whereas in WTF the general rule is 5-7 years.

Having said all this, please remember that the two styles are very similar (especially from a beginners point of view) and apart from the bitter politics between the two organisations in the past, there is no major ‘beef’ or ‘tension’ between the two styles at present.

Which one is more popular?

WTF and ITF are both equally popular throughout the world, indeed between them they have made Taekwondo the most practiced martial art on the planet - however they are popular in different proportions in each continent.

For example, in Asia the most popular style of the two is WTF due to it being the only style promoted by the South Korean government.  There is also a popular belief (for complicated reasons) that ITF is the style of North Korea and suffers in popularity due to the policies of the northern Communist state.  Thailand and Japan are particular fans of Taekwondo, and in many parts of the two countries Taekwondo is more popular than their native martial arts of Muay Thai and Karate.  For example, Tony Jaa of ‘Ong-Bak’ and ‘Warrior King’ fame grew up practicing Taekwondo before becoming famous for Muay Thai.

In North America ITF and WTF are fairly even in popularity, however Taekwondo as a whole suffers in popularity from the popular perception that is simply another style of Karate.  This erroneous belief has been supported by famous Taekwondo-ists such as Chuck Norris and Simon Rhee fighting under the name of Karate in the 1970s before the then unknown martial art of Taekwondo exploded in popularity (mostly due to people discovering the true origins of these famous personalities’ skills).

In Europe ITF is generally more popular due to its more international nature, the ITF headquarters having moved between Canada and Austria for many decades – whereas WTF’s headquarters (the Kukkikwon) has always been in South Korea.  In a sense ITF arrived first and reaped the benefits of the lack of competition.  However, as well as WTF making a massive impact and now beginning to rival ITF there are many other style/organisations that have appeared (GTA,GTF, WTA, etc…) vying for dominance. Also a split in ITF that occurred after the late death of founder General Choi Hong Hi has lead to three rival contenders for leadership of the style; as of print (July 2007) the disagreement is currently going through the Austrian courts so that leadership of the style be decided.

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