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According to Wikipedia, there are currently 3 ITF Taekwon-do organisations:

  • ITF - President Chang Ung
  • ITF - President Pablo Trajtenberg
  • ITF - President Choi Jung Hwa

Does anyone know how many members each organisation has?

Thanks

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  • I wasn't even aware of the schism that took place in 2002 until you mentioned it. It's been a long time since I trained in ITF. Well, that's sad to hear. I think the official ITF organization is the one managed under the original ITF board, which would be Chang Ung's ITF. It would probably have the most members just because they inherited the whole thing. But I know of no official member counts for any of the 3 organizations.
    – Steve Weigand
    Dec 22, 2014 at 21:45
  • I do not know what organization is legitimate. Because the facts reported are changing according to sources. So I do not take sides. Anyway, it's not a choice that belongs to the students, but the teacher. Students are often not aware of all this useless politic. However if you are a high-level competitor. You may prefer to join the organization with the most followers.
    – Vakarm
    Dec 23, 2014 at 17:44
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    You should read up on the schism that took place between Jeff Bolt and Anthony Goh when there was a similar legality question for the USA Wushu Kung-fu Association. That happened in the mid-90's. Those that followed the letter of the law broke off to form a new president for the organization. The old president (Anthony Goh) cried foul and claimed himself to be legitimate head. To this day, Anthony Goh is president, and the splinter group has called it quits. Lesson: It's hard to splinter off and succeed, even if you're legally correct. Friendships and connections matter the most.
    – Steve Weigand
    Dec 23, 2014 at 20:21
  • So much for "build a more peaceful world"! The people at the top of these organisations should learn to put their differences a side, and get along for the benefit of their students!
    – reggie
    Jul 29, 2018 at 7:53

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I think this one is going to be way too hard to answer exactly. I did some digging and all I could find was information on the one that I'm assuming is the most popular located in Korea. If you visit ITF Official you can see that their membership climbs to a claimed 14201 members.

This doesn't seem too far fetched as they are also claiming stake in 17 countries. I would assume there are a similar number for the other levels of what you state are apart of this original set up.

There is an ITF Administration that claims 110 organizations. They do not claim a number of members directly on their site that I have found.

And here ITF Hong Hi claims to have caused the spread of Taekwon-Do. This site supports that claim but seems to be separate. ITF (other?).

Taekwon-do is ever evolving, ever growing. There really could be a count that is created, but doing it separate doesn't make sense to me. In the end all of the forms follow a general baseline and all of the teachings follow a general model. Even if one is the most popular world wide it might not be popular in the region you're in or another reader is in. But knowing these separations are interesting enough!

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  • Then i suppose the biggest is tkd-itf.org (Pablo Trajtenberg) the World Championship will host 2129 athletes from 58 countries. Then I would suppose it is sure that they have more than 14201 members, It would be surprising that 15% of their member would go to the world championship,... wchamp2015.pztkd.lublin.pl
    – Vakarm
    May 16, 2015 at 13:22
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    yea sadly there is no scientific proof I can provide, but at least I gave a shot :D
    – Cayce K
    May 17, 2015 at 1:18

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