K-pop dance covers on YouTube are a dime a dozen. With the popularity of K-pop all across the globe, fans who can bust a move are coming up with numerous dance covers and uploading them online. It takes exceptional talent, skill and creativity to attain the most views—and the Korean taekwondo demonstration team K-Tigers know this all too well.

While taekwondo demonstrations are always exciting and amazing to watch—with all the high kicks, jumps and wooden block-breaking—the K-Tigers leave a lasting impression by using popular song and dance. Combining their impressive kicks and flips and pumsae, or form movements, with the latest hit songs and their equally popular choreography, the K-Tigers’ taekwondo dance cover is such a brilliant idea that it would be hard to not take notice.


One Big Bang Leads to Another

With a little nudge from one of K-pop’s biggest artists, BIGBANG’s G-Dragon, who tipped the video to his band mate Taeyang and his almost three million followers on Twitter, K-Tigers’ cover video of Taeyang’s song “Ringa Linga” instantaneously became a hit not only among BIGBANG fans but among K-pop fans worldwide. As of this writing, the video is a few thousand views away from reaching four million, and they have also released cover videos of other popular songs, such as EXO’s “Growl” and “Overdose,” and BTS’ “Boy in Luv.”

“That was so legit! I definitely want to take up taekwondo now,” commented a girl with the username supalove. Among thousands of comments praising how cool and impressive the video is, a number of viewers said they were inspired by the group to take up the martial art, something that K-Tigers has been aiming for since the group’s inception in 1990. “We want to show that taekwondo is not only a martial art and a sport but a product that can develop into a cultural industry,” said Ahn Chang-beom, director of K-Tigers.


Not Just for Kicks

According to Ahn, the group, which has earned itself a reputation of being one of the best taekwondo demonstration teams around, started performing with music around 2000. “At that time, we mainly used pop and rock songs. By the late 2000s, we started using K-pop songs as well,” said Ahn, who is also in charge of the choreography and direction in some of K-Tigers’ videos.

Composed of about 250 high-kicking athletes scouted from all over Korea, K-Tigers separates itself from the typical demonstration team in that they take in young athletes and train them to perform, eventually grooming them into taekwondo actors like their homegrown talent Na Tae-joo, who played a major role in the movie “The Kick” and will star in the upcoming Hollywood movie “Pan,” and actress Taemi, co-star of “The Kick” who is often photographed performing high kicks. “Currently, aside from those in K-Tigers, it is rare to find taekwondo practitioners who are excellent in another field aside from taekwondo,” said Ahn.


To widen their presence, K-Tigers has recently collaborated with media company CJ E&M and developed the smart phone application called “K-Tigers in Me,” which rounds up all the group’s videos.

“It looks like K-pop is an open door for the outside world to get to know Korean culture. I never knew that taekwondo first started in Korea,” said another YouTube user with the name chi Allen.

With the integration of taekwondo and K-pop, and with the presence of taekwondo in pop culture such as movies and smart phone applications, the group is well on its way to achieving their goal. As more and more people take notice of the martial art and Korean popular culture, people are surely to take interest in K-Tigers, who give both a cool spin.

* Article from Korea Magazine (August 2014)