‘The 2016 Cheong-ju Martial Arts Mastership’ will be held in Cheong-ju from September 2nd to the 8th. The theme of this event is ‘The harmony of the world’s martial arts’.
  In this contest, which is hosted by Chungcheongbuk-do and Cheongju-si and supervised by the Cheong-ju Martial Arts Mastership Organization Committee, 2,300 athletes from 89 countries will be invited to participate in 17 events. This will be the biggest scale for the international martial arts mastership ever held, after it overhauled the first plan that would have hosted 1,600 athletes from 30 countries with 15 events.
  Also, they have interpreting volunteers who will help with this competition. There will be people from 89 countries, so they have Japanese, Chinese and English language interpreters. Lee Joo-yeon(’16, Dept. of English Literature), an interpreting volunteer for this competition, said, “I hope this competition will be an icon for  Chungcheongbuk-do rather than being forgotten.”
  The organizing committee has done the CTAP(Counter Terrorism Action Plans) system with the Chungbuk Police Agency and has made  contracts with 6 general hospitals for  safety matters. They also prepared 10 accommodations(Hotel Ramada, Lotte City Hotel, and others).
  According to a staff member of the organizing committee, preparing was not easy from the start. They had problems like a refusal from Chung-ju City Hall and a reduction of the budget from the provincial assembly, but they overcame this. They secured the additional budget, three billion won, and now the budget problems are solved.
  The organizing committee’s staff said, “Go Chan-sick, the secretary general, said that the goal of this competition is making the martial arts contest like the Olympics and making a martial cultural heritage for Korea, so Cheong-ju will be the central point of it, like Athens in Greece.”
  Lastly, the organizing committee’s staff said, “I’m anticipating that this competition will increase the value of martial arts and will become a new Olympics which will spread each country’s culture. Cheong-ju City Hall and Chungcheongbuk-do prepared for this competition very hard, so watching this ‘2016 Cheong-ju Martial Arts Mastership’ will be good.”

By Eo Joon-seok
js37@cbnu.ac.kr