A total of 48 members of the 2009 Summer WTF Taekwondo Peace Corps have embarked on their overseas voluntary service.

Each team is composed of four volunteers, three taekwondo majors and one language student. The 2009 Summer Taekwondo Peace Corps members are dispatched to 12 countries. They are El Salvador, India, Isle of Man, Samoa, Bhutan, Nigeria, Mongolia, Angola, the Philippines, Poland, Azerbaijan, and Mexico.

The first four-member team left for El Salvador on July 14, followed by a four-member team to India the following day.

An Isle of Man team left on July 20, while a four-member team left for Samoa and Bhutan on July 24 and are scheduled to return home on Aug. 23 and Aug. 25, respectively.

The 48 members from 21 Korean universities were selected among 156 applicants for the 2009 Summer Taekwondo Peace Corps. They also underwent a week-long intensive education training.

The WTF launched the Taekwondo Peace Corps program in the summer of 2008 and first dispatched 27 members to seven regions in five countries during the summer of 2008. The second dispatch was made during the winter of 2008, during which a total of 32 members were sent to eight countries for one to two months. The dispatched countries were China, Russia, Pakistan, Paraguay, India, Egypt, Morocco, Bolivia, Greece, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.

The WTF Taekwondo Peace Corps program is operated in cooperation with GCS International as one of the WTF Solidarity programs for technical enhancement of WTF member national associations.

The Taekwondo Peace Corps project was first raised by WTF President Chungwon Choue at an international workshop on sports and peace in Leuven, Belgium on Sept. 21, 2007. Dr. Choue then proposed an expanded “Sports Peace Corps” initiative involving all summer Olympic sports at an international forum on peace and sport in Monaco on Dec. 6, 2007.