Meet Taekwondowon: Taekwondo's Mecca

Muju 2017 World Taekwondo Championships are being held at Taekwondowon, a Taekwondo only focused facility located in the Muju zone of Korea.
Name
Literally, Taekwondowon stands for the complex where taekwondo related objects are gathered to achieve the optimal goal of “One World Through Taekwondo.” It also contains the symbolic meaning of Moo-Reung-Do-Won (Shangri-La) or Utopia.
The former name, “Taekwondo Park,” was a combination of two common nouns. Consequently, there were critical remarks that the name is not fully representing the image as the center of world taekwondo.
To find a more appropriate name for the taekwondo hub, in March of 2011, TPF organized an ad hoc committee comprised of representatives from Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism (MCST), taekwondo organizations such as Kukkiwon, World Taekwondo Federation (WTF), and Korea Taekwondo Association (KTA), and academic fields as well as a naming expert.
History
Taekwondowon was finalized in 2014 after 9 years of hard work and a 245 billion Won investment (218,371,434 USD). With 66,000 square meters is the largest Taekwondo training space in the world by far.
Korea wanted to give its national sport what is worth and built a giant space which occupies nine valleys. Taekwondowon is 10 times bigger than Seoul’s World Cup stadium and 70 per cent the size of New York’s Central Park.
T1 Arena
The T1 Arena, the crown jewel, has a total capacity of 4,571 spectators. It is holding all Muju 2017 World Taekwondo Championships matches among its 5 fields of play.

Taekwondo Museum
The Taekwondo Museum offers an Introduction to the history, development, and globalization of our sport. It showcases various themes related to Taekwondo and martial arts such as materials from the Olympic Games since Taekwondo started to take part in the program. Also, at the Symbolic artwork hall we can see a display of Taekwondo belts that conveys the tradition and values of taekwondo.
There is also a shop with plenty of goods, books, mascot items, and souvenirs related to our sport.





Experience Center
At the Yap! Experience Center the visitor can test basic prerequisites of Taekwondo physical fitness (agility, strength, flexibility, judgement and balance). But the best part is the Interactive Technique Experience: An interactive space to experience high-level techniques (mid-air front and side kicks) using wires and watch creative taekwondo techniques through half-circle 3-D images.


Indoor Theatre
Taekwondowon also has an indoor theater within their facilities, which can accomodate up to 423 people.

The Spirit Zone
A space that symbolizes the philosophy and spiritual world of taekwondo

The Mind Zone
In it, Taekwondo practitioners can go beyond the physical training for taekwondo to explore the academic study of the sport to achieve harmony of the body and mind, which defines a true Taekwondo player.

Training
During the Muju 2017 World Taekwondo Championships, a group of Taekwondo University students performed a training session to show all the facilites within the complex.



Pau Aguilar, Muju
WTM