Choi Hong Hi

▪ 2003

      Korean army officer and martial artist (b. Nov. 9, 1918, Myong Chun district, Kor. [now in North Korea]—d. June 15, 2002, Pyongyang, N.Kor.), was credited with having developed tae kwon do in the 1940s by combining elements of other Asian martial arts forms and with having helped it to spread to more than 120 countries and 40 million practitioners. He also was a founder (1946) of the South Korean army and rose in it to the rank of major general, but he went into exile in Canada in 1971 in protest against the politicizing of tae kwon do.

* * *