The international martial arts competition will kick off in Chungju of North Chungcheong Province, about 150 kilometers southeast of Seoul, on Friday for an eight-day run, bringing together about 4,000 martial arts masters and officials from 100 countries worldwide, according to Yonhap News Agency.

Competitions will take place in a total of 20 non-Western martial arts, including taekwondo, wushu, judo, kendo, muay thai, jujitsu and kickboxing. Dubbed the Martial Arts Olympics, the South Korean government-approved event is also sponsored by the Global Association of International Sports Federation (GAISF).

The Chungju masterships is the second competition to be held in the central South Korean province, after the first competition was hosted by Cheongju, the capital of the province, about 140 km south of Seoul, in August 2016.

A ranking point system, which has been applied to the Olympics, the world championships and the Asian Games, is used for the martial arts event’s nine categories, including taekwondo, jujitsu, muay thai, savate and pencak silat. The system will be applied to the taekwondo poomsae event for the first time, and the team winners of taekwondo kyorugi, a type of full-contact sparring, will earn an automatic berth in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

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In a letter to Iran’s National Olympic Committee (NOC), Secretary General of the International Federation of Muaythai Associations (IFMA) Stephan Fox has called on Iran to establish an independent federation for Muaythai to boost the sport in Iran.

Fox refers to newcomers to IFMA such as Pakistan, Afghanistan and Palestine that have already independent federation for Muaythai, urging the newly pointed president of Iranian Muaythai Javad Nasiri to promote his body to an independent federation to further boost the sport in Iran.

Muaythai is currently under the Iran’s National Olympic Committee (NOC).

An image of the IFMA secretary general is as following:

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