Choi Hong Hi

South Korean army major general and martial artist regarded as the founder of Taekwon-Do. Trained in Taekkyon and Shotokan karate, he synthesized these traditions into a system that a Korean naming board, acting on his proposal, formally named Taekwon-Do on 11 April 1955. On 22 March 1966 he founded the International Taekwon-Do Federation in Seoul with nine member associations and served as its first president. After opposing how the South Korean government used Taekwon-Do for political ends, he went into exile in Canada in the early 1970s and continued to lead the ITF from abroad, including through a later organizational split with the Seoul-based body that became World Taekwondo. He died in Pyongyang, North Korea, in June 2002.