structural:scholar_edition, linguistic:translation, linguistic:paraphrasing
Development of multiple styles

In 1959, the Korea Tang Soo Do Association (later Korea Taekwondo Association or KTA) was established to facilitate the unification of Korean martial arts. Choi wanted all the other member kwans of the KTA to adopt his own Chan Hon-style of Taekwondo, as a unified style. This was, however, met with resistance as the other kwans instead wanted a unified style to be created based on inputs from all the kwans, to serve as a way to bring on the heritage and characteristics of all of the styles, not just the style of a single kwan. As a response to this, along with political disagreements about teaching taekwondo in North Korea and unifying the whole Korean Peninsula, Choi broke with the (South Korea) KTA in 1966, in order to establish the International Taekwon-Do Federation (ITF)— a separate governing body devoted to institutionalizing his Chan Hon-style of taekwondo in Canada.

Initially, the South Korean president gave Choi's ITF limited support, due to their personal relationship. However, Choi and the government later split on the issue of whether to accept North Korean influence on the martial art. In 1972, South Korea withdrew its support for the ITF. The ITF continued to function as an independent federation, then headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Choi continued to develop the ITF-style, notably with the 1983 publication of his Encyclopedia of Taekwon-Do. After his retirement, the ITF split in 2001 and then again in 2002 to create three separate ITF federations, each of which continues to operate today under the same name.

In 1972, the KTA and the South Korean government's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism established the Kukkiwon as the new national academy for Taekwondo. Kukkiwon now serves many of the functions previously served by the KTA, in terms of defining a government-sponsored unified style of Taekwondo. In 1973 the KTA and Kukkiwon supported the establishment of the World Taekwondo Federation (WTF), which later changed its name to "World Taekwondo" (WT) in 2017 due to the previous initialism overlapping with an internet slang term. While the Kukkiwon focus on the martial art and self-defence aspects of Kukki-Taekwondo, the WT promoted the sportive side, and its competitions employ a subset of the techniqes present in the Kukkiwon-style Taekwondo. For this reason, Kukkiwon-style Taekwondo is often referred to as WT-style Taekwondo, sport-style Taekwondo, or Olympic-style Taekwondo, though in reality the style is defined by the Kukkiwon, not the WT.

Since 2000, Taekwondo has been one of three Asian martial arts (the others being judo and karate), and one of six total (the others being the previously mentioned, Greco-Roman wrestling, freestyle wrestling, and boxing) included in the Olympic Games. It started as a demonstration event at the 1988 games in Seoul, a year after becoming a medal event at the Pan Am Games, and became an official medal event at the 2000 games in Sydney. In 2010, taekwondo was accepted as a Commonwealth Games sport.