South Korean Taekwondo Athlete Aims for Double Gold at Asian Games with Virtual Taekwondo Debut

MUJU, South Korea, Sept. 7 (Yonhap) -- No South Korean taekwondo practitioner has won more than one gold medal at an Asian Games, for the simple reason that athletes could only compete in one weight class at a time.

For this year's Asian Games, however, they will have a chance to bring home two medals for the first time, thanks to the addition of virtual taekwondo.

In the digitized version of the Korean martial art, practitioners wearing virtual reality (VR) headgear and motion-tracking devices will take on their virtual opponents. The goal is to deplete their opponent's power gauge -- a la combat video games -- or have more left on their gauge at the end of the 60-second round.

For South Korea, An Hyang-sik will compete in both real-life and virtual taekwondo, with his sights set firmly on winning two gold medals at the Sept. 19-Oct. 4 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games in Japan.

"I will try to play our national anthem twice in Japan," An told reporters Sunday, after competing in a World Taekwondo (WT) Grand Prix event in Muju, some 180 kilometers south of Seoul. He will compete in the men's 58 kilograms against humans, while there are no weight divisions in the mixed-gender virtual version.

"We only have one minute each round in virtual taekwondo, compared to two minutes in the human taekwondo. So we really have to give our max effort in that short minute," An said. "We get to take more off the power gauge with shots to the head than to the body. And it takes more energy out of you, too, and it can be hard on the hamstrings."

With no weight classes, An opined that smaller and quicker athletes may enjoy an advantage.

"Bigger and heavier athletes may be relatively slow with their kicks, whereas lighter practitioners can get off two or three kicks in succession," An said. "Athletes who are flexible and precise with their kicks could also have an edge."

An said South Korean practitioners had a delayed start to their virtual taekwondo training than their international counterparts. WT introduced virtual taekwondo in June 2023 in Singapore during the Olympic Esports Week, and then Singapore swept up nine medals, including four gold medals, at the inaugural virtual taekwondo world championships that it hosted.

An said he attended a joint pre-Asian Games virtual taekwondo training camp in Muju last month with other Asian fighters headed to Japan, and felt they were a step or two ahead of him.

"I heard they have more specialized virtual taekwondo training sessions and work on it from morning to night," An said. "We only started training four or five months ago, and so we have so much more to learn."

An said he works on virtual taekwondo in the morning and then turns his focus to human combats in his afternoon and evening sessions.

"My goal is to win gold medals in both and I am full of confidence," the 22-year-old said.