Taekwondo sport development: The case of Taiwan

Developing countries such as South Korea and Taiwan have successfully nurtured the development of taekwondo. The development of taekwondo in Taiwan has spanned 41 years. In the Olympic games, Taiwan has accumulated seven gold medals in Taekwondo. In recent years, the Taiwanese government has played an active part by encouraging athletes to strive to the highest level in order to win medals. In fact, the development of a sport system is a complex and dynamic process. This study takes a system dynamics approach to model the development of taekwondo in Taiwan. In particular, this study probes into the interactions of four interrelated causal feedback loops to better understand the nature of the development of taekwondo and attempts to account for the dynamics of resulting system behaviour. In addition, this study simulates the effects of the award-winning inducement policy. The working premise is that the development model advanced here has the potential to improve more than our understanding of the development of taekwondo, and therefore we might expect to see its application to future studies other than those related to sports.