A separate federation during the founder’s lifetime
In 1990, Park Jung Tae founded the Global Taekwon-Do Federation, or GTF. The new international organisation grew from the ITF teaching community during General Choi Hong Hi’s lifetime.
Park belonged to the generation of Korean instructors who turned international visits into lasting schools and national networks. He taught in Canada, Europe and Asia. His authority grew through classes, seminars and personal work with students. Those longstanding relationships later helped sustain the new federation.
Separation and the creation of GTF
Park’s departure followed disagreements with Choi over working arrangements and financial terms within ITF. Park chose to build an independent international organisation, joined by instructors connected through years of working together.
Park sought support from John Tompkins, Scott McNeely and Robert Hardin as he developed the new organisation. Founding a federation required people who could sustain international contacts, organise competitions and arrange instruction. For instructors, it meant deciding with whom they would continue their work. Such a transfer did not erase their previous training: the new organisation grew through knowledge and relationships developed in a shared community.
GTF drew on teachers who already had clubs, students and international contacts. These relationships helped the new federation establish regular teaching and competition.
A shared foundation and a separate syllabus
GTF retained patterns from the shared ITF tradition and developed its own syllabus. Jee-Goo joined familiar patterns such as Kwang-Gae and Po-Eun. New patterns became part of the federation’s distinct technical programme.
GTF’s competition programme established procedures for designated and optional patterns. Its rules and instructor courses supported shared standards within the new network.
The organisation after Park
Park Jung Tae died on 11 April 2002. His students continued the GTF’s international work. In July 2026, President Linda Park took part in a meeting in Toronto devoted to the federation’s development in Ethiopia.
By the time Choi died, the GTF had followed its own path for twelve years. Meanwhile, another crisis had developed inside the ITF: a dispute over the transfer of presidential power. It unfolded in 2001–2003 and led to the three main branches that continued using the ITF name.