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World Taekwondo sends federation flag into orbit ahead of 2027 world championships

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By Jhoo Dong-chan
  • Published KST
World Taekwondo President Choue Chung-won, center, poses with former astronaut Sergei K. Krikalev, left, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Tuesday. Courtesy of World Taekwondo

World Taekwondo President Choue Chung-won, center, poses with former astronaut Sergei K. Krikalev, left, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Tuesday. Courtesy of World Taekwondo

World Taekwondo, the Seoul-based governing body for the Olympic sport and traditional martial art, said Wednesday it became one of the first international sports federations to send its official flag into space, as part of a one-year countdown to the 2027 World Taekwondo Championships in Astana, Kazakhstan.

The flag launched aboard the Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft, which lifted off at 7:47 p.m. local time from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the world's first and largest active space launch facility and the site from which Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space in 1961. The launch was organized with the Kazakhstan Taekwondo Federation, led by its president, Kudrat Shamiyev.

World Taekwondo said the International Olympic Committee's flag had previously flown to space during the Sydney 2000 Olympics, and FIFA had sent match balls to the International Space Station, but that this marked the first time its own flag joined an active crewed mission.

The Soyuz crew includes Russian space agency Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina and NASA astronaut Anil Menon, who will photograph themselves holding the flag before it returns to Earth next year to be used at the 2027 championships.

Ahead of the launch, delegates unveiled a statue of a taekwondo athlete holding a globe as a gift to the city of Baikonur, and World Taekwondo President Chungwon Choue handed the flag to veteran cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev in a handover ceremony before touring the cosmodrome's historic launch and assembly facilities.

"Today, taekwondo transcends terrestrial boundaries," Choue said. Taekwondo, a Korean martial art, has been a full medal sport at the Olympics since 2000.

This article was published with the assistance of generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.