Welcome to my website at ywo.net.au based in Perth, Western Australia. In God’s providence, I have been able to practise a range of arts as personal pursuits over the years. I have established this website to help advance my practice, teaching, and advocacy of those arts. Historically, one of my main endeavours has been practising the art of tae kwon do, so this website begins primarily as an on-line resource for that art.
Tae Kwon Do is a Korean martial art introduced in the South Korean military forces in the 1950s and practised by many people around the world since the 1960s. The name is written 태권도 in Hangul (Korean characters) and 跆拳道 in Hanja (Chinese characters). It takes various forms in the English language—typically “tae kwon do,” “tae kwon-do,” “taekwon-do,” or “taekwondo”—and may refer to very different practices.
The Olympic martial sport of taekwondo, which involves competition sparring in full body armour and focuses on kicking techniques, is probably the most widely known practice. The traditional martial art of tae kwon do typically holds personal development (including both physical and mental aspects) and self-defence as fundamental aims, and often eschews competition. Those two approaches to the art probably represent the extremes of the spectrum, and there are a variety of organisations and styles between them.
My formal practice of tae kwon do began in 1987, in a school within the then World Taekwondo Federation (WTF), now known as World Taekwondo (WT). I have been practising the art continuously since 1994 in schools stylistically aligned with the older Korea Taekwondo Association (KTA) and with the International Taekwon-Do Federation (ITF), before the ITF divided into several discrete organisations.
I have been teaching traditional tae kwon do since 1995, and began managing tae kwon do training centres in 1996. Most of my teaching activity has been in Perth’s western suburbs, particularly in Cottesloe (1990s), Subiaco (2000s), and Nedlands (2000s to 2020s). While I have lived outside the western suburbs since 2008, I continued teaching there until the end of 2023, at which point I began teaching in the southern suburbs.
While I have always taught tae kwon do in a voluntary capacity, secondary to my full-time occupations over the years, the government classifies this as a business-like activity—hence this website appears in the net.au domain (an Australian commercial domain).
As of July 2024, I am an independent tae kwon do instructor and scholar.
Yean Wei Ong