First Power Taekwondo International…South Korea wins women’s team event on day one
The South Korean women’s taekwondo team won the first day of the Seoul 2023 World Taekwondo (WT) World Cup Team Championship Series, the first international power taekwondo competition.
The team of Hong Hyo-rim (Gangwon Cheego), Myeong Mina, Jang Eun-ji (Incheon Dong-gu Office) and Seo Tan-ya (Chungnam National University) defeated Morocco with a round robin score of 2-0 in the final of the women’s team competition at Kintex 2 Exhibition Center 6 in Goyang-si, Gyeonggi-do, on Thursday.
The team, which defeated favorite China in the semifinals with a round-robin score of 2-1, stood atop the podium with a fall in the final.
The tournament, which featured eight nations – Korea, China, Iran, Morocco, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, and Côte d’Ivoire – is played in a “power taekwondo” style where the first team to subtract the opponent’s 200 points wins.
In a departure from the traditional scoring system, an equal “power gauge” is deducted based on the impact of the attack, and the winner is the one who depletes the opponent’s gauge first.
It’s similar to a fighting game.
Players who engage in passive behavior such as fouls or delayed attacks will receive a five-second passive penalty, during which their power bar will double.
A successful face turn attack while passive can deduct 60 of the 200 points in a single attack, and a powerful attack can deduct another 25 points if the referee calls for an extra point.
After doubling their opponent’s score in the first round of the final, 185-170, the smiling team won the second round 140-90 and took home the $20,000 (approx. KRW 27 million) prize.
The second day of the tournament will see the men’s team competition on Friday. The final day, the 16th, will feature the mixed team event, which made its debut at the Hangzhou Asian Games.
The Korean Taekwondo Association held a power taekwondo competition for domestic athletes from 2019 to last year in an effort to improve the competition style and make taekwondo more media-friendly, but this year the event was reorganized into a World Cup international event organized by the WTF. 사설토토
