A.E.T.F. History

Even a bird nests before it rains. Moreover, being exposed to the danger under their conspiracy, I wanted to consider who wolud be the next president of the ITF. I had considered a couple of candidates earlier, but by through the pressure or the lures of the Korean government, they had to leave me one by one.

I thought the Vice-President, Master Suh-Jong Kang, might be the one. Having that in mind, I took him to Europe in June 1979, to give him some international experience. The first destination was Stockholm. There we joined with Master Ki-Ha Rhee, who had come from England, and instructor Won-Sup Lim, who was residing in Sweden. Then we headed off to Oslo, Norway.

The reason why we were there was to create an organisation uniting the associations in eastern and western Europe. When I arrived at the hotel all four from the East and ten from the West had already arrived there.

In the meeting with those representatives from 14 countries, the All Europe Taekwon-Do Federation was born. All agreed to select Ki-Ha Rhee as the President, and Won-Sup Lim as the Technical Committee Chair; the two rare Korean members still showed that Korea was the suzerain country from whence Taekwon-Do had originated. I was also glad to see that the East and the West were united, using Taekwon-Do to break through 30 years of cold war, as if they were real brothers.

Having this vision of the future, the East and the West united in Taekwon-Do together, proving on the 14th of June, 1979 that this martial art was a source of affirmation to all religions, races, ideologies, and nationalities. It became another memorable day in the history of Taekwon-Do.

Gen. Choi Hong Hi, The Father of Taekwon-Do
“Taekwon-Do and I”, part 2, pages 330-331