SAFETY Managements of Taekwondo Schools in Republic of KOREA

Taekwondo, a martial arts native to Korea was debuted as a demonstration sport at the 1988 Seoul Olympics and 1992 Barcelona Olympics, and then adopted as an official sport at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Taekwondo is known to contribute to harmonious development of the body through a skill system which is organized to allow a balanced use of parts of it, and promote growth of children, fitness of the middle aged and the old aged and health and beauty of women. In addition, if children acquire black belts, Taekwondo can provide various special activities for them, in place of busy parents over the weekend and the school vacation. The number of Teakwondo population has increased, due to such strength. According to the current statistics of Kukkiwon. the number of Taekwondo schools in Korea is 9530, that of black belt holders is about 4.3 million and that of Dan holders is about 4.2 million. At the core of such populari-zation and domestic and foreign developments of Taekwondo, its characteristics of marital arts and educational value play key roles, and perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to say that the Taekwondo school , a matrix of Taekwondo education is the foundation for such an advancement. However, problems of safety managements in the private education market continue to appear. In particular, frequency of injury and level of exposure to danger in private education of physical sector must be relatively higher than those in that of general art or language sector, because the education is implemented by using the body in the former. Above all, Taekwondo is a sport that helps train body and mind through marital arts including Gyeorugi (bouts) and Gyeokpa (breaking), so need to accompany with safety managements against safety acci-dents is stronger than that of other private educations. The results of study on safety managements of Taekwondo schools show various problems. The first problem is lack of recognition on the safety management. Although Taekwondo coaches at front line agree that the safety of schools is important, but the safety managements they actually have conducted tend to be passive. In addition, they should recognize wider scope of safety managements in the schools and change their perceptions about them as places where even educations of safety managements can be implemented. The second problem is the poor safety education. Although government agencies have conducted various safety educations, direct and ef-fective educations of safety managements in Taekwondo schools are almost not practiced. For further develop-ment and improvement of Taekwondo which has been quantitatively grown, the safety managements should be educated by considering contents, subjects and methods of them. The third problem is lask of the manual of safety managements. The manual serving as traffic signs on congested roads can help prevent safety accidents and efficiently cope with them if any. However, there is no manual that can be applied to all Taekwondo schools, so the safety management manual which can be accepted by all schools should be developed based on previous experience and knowledge. schools should recognize themselves as safety management professionals and also practically make the schools safer by improving safety environment. In addition, they should change their perceptions about the safety management through educational approach rather than managemental one and make and use the standard manual which all schools can actually use.