MUJU, South Korea — South Korean taekwondo athlete Ahn Hyang-sik is chasing an Asian Games feat no Korean taekwondo athlete has accomplished before: winning two gold medals at the same Games.
But his path to history will take him into two very different arenas.
Ahn will compete in the traditional men’s 58-kilogram kyorugi event at the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games, while also representing South Korea in virtual taekwondo, a technology-driven version of the martial art making its official Asian Games medal debut in Japan.
If he wins both, Ahn would become the first South Korean taekwondo athlete to claim two gold medals at a single Asian Games and the first athlete to win Asian Games gold in both traditional kyorugi and virtual taekwondo.
Ahn, speaking to reporters in Muju on September 6, made his ambition clear.
“I will try to play our national anthem twice in Japan.”
The 2026 Asian Games run from September 19 through October 4, giving Ahn only a short window to prepare for an unprecedented double challenge.
One athlete, two completely different fights
Traditional taekwondo is familiar: athletes face one another directly, with matches contested according to weight divisions.
Virtual taekwondo looks dramatically different.
Competitors wear VR headsets and motion-tracking sensors while standing on a 4-by-4-meter competition area. They do not physically strike one another. Instead, their real movements are translated into digital avatars that fight inside a virtual arena.
The objective is to reduce an opponent’s virtual health gauge to zero—or finish the round with more health remaining.
Each round lasts 60 seconds, and matches are decided in a best-of-three format. Head kicks inflict more damage than body kicks, while a separate stun gauge can leave an opponent defenseless for three seconds.
That makes virtual taekwondo much more than simply playing a fighting video game.
The athlete still has to physically execute the movements.
Why the VR version is harder than it looks
Ahn says the biggest difference is speed.
A traditional kyorugi round lasts two minutes, while virtual taekwondo gives competitors only one minute to attack, defend and manage their energy.
Because head attacks cause greater damage, athletes are also encouraged to maintain a high level of offensive pressure.
Ahn believes lighter and faster competitors could have an advantage because they can potentially launch several kicks in quick succession. Flexibility and accuracy can also become decisive factors.
And unlike conventional taekwondo, virtual taekwondo has no weight or gender divisions.
That means a 58kg specialist such as Ahn could face athletes of very different physical builds in the same competition.
The technology effectively removes some of the physical differences that normally determine matchups in traditional combat sports.
South Korea is playing catch-up
Ahn’s double-gold ambition comes with a major obstacle: South Korea entered the virtual-taekwondo development race later than some of its international rivals.
World Taekwondo introduced virtual taekwondo internationally at the Olympic Esports Week in Singapore in 2023. Singapore subsequently became a major center for the discipline and dominated the inaugural world championships it hosted in 2024.
Yonhap reported that Singapore collected nine medals, including four golds, at those inaugural world championships.
Ahn said some overseas competitors have been training specifically for virtual taekwondo for much longer.
South Korea’s preparation, by comparison, began only around four to five months ago.
“We have so much more to learn,” Ahn said, according to Yonhap.
That experience gap could become critical when the competition moves to Japan.
The sport has already produced specialists
The rise of virtual taekwondo is not simply a Korean story.
The Associated Press reported that the discipline is gaining popularity across Southeast Asia, with athletes and coaches developing specialized training programs around the technology.
Vietnamese athlete Nguyen Thanh Hien Linh, for example, initially struggled with the format despite being an elite traditional taekwondo athlete. After adapting to the virtual environment, she later won a gold medal at a virtual taekwondo competition in Malaysia.
The AP also reported that the sport is being developed jointly by World Taekwondo and Singapore-based Refract Technologies, combining traditional taekwondo movement with VR and motion-tracking technology.
That evolution is producing athletes who are learning that traditional kicking ability alone is not enough.
Competitors need spatial awareness, timing, stamina and the ability to understand an opponent’s movement inside a digital environment.
A sport that looks like gaming—but feels like training
Virtual taekwondo’s appearance can make it easy to dismiss as an ordinary video game.
The reality is considerably more physical.
Athletes perform repeated kicks, defensive movements and rapid changes of direction while wearing VR equipment. Coaches interviewed by AP emphasized stamina, muscle endurance, flexibility, speed and tactical awareness as key components of training.
There is also a major difference from conventional combat sports: competitors do not physically hit each other.
That means the discipline can offer a combat-sport experience while substantially reducing the direct impact and injury risk associated with full-contact sparring.
The format has consequently attracted young athletes and competitors who might not otherwise participate in traditional full-contact taekwondo.
The Asian Games are giving virtual taekwondo its biggest stage yet
The Aichi-Nagoya 2026 Asian Games will mark virtual taekwondo’s first appearance as an official medal event at the continental multi-sport competition.
According to the Korea Times’ report, 16 athletes from 15 countries, both male and female and aged 17 to 35, will compete for a single gold medal regardless of weight or gender.
The event represents a rapid rise for a discipline that only appeared internationally in 2023.
In just three years, virtual taekwondo has moved from an experimental digital competition into a medal event at one of Asia’s largest sporting competitions.
But Ahn’s real challenge is balancing both sports
Ahn is not preparing for virtual taekwondo alone.
He must simultaneously maintain the speed, conditioning and tactical discipline required for men’s 58kg kyorugi.
That creates a unique training problem.
The two disciplines reward different rhythms. Traditional kyorugi gives athletes longer rounds and direct physical engagement, while virtual taekwondo demands explosive attacks within a 60-second window and requires competitors to translate their physical movement into a digital environment.
Ahn has therefore been dividing his training between the two.
His goal is ambitious but straightforward: win both.
The historic opportunity—and the risk
South Korean taekwondo has traditionally produced multiple medalists at the Asian Games, but athletes have been limited by the structure of conventional competition.
An athlete competing in one weight category could normally only chase one individual kyorugi gold.
Virtual taekwondo changes that equation.
The new event creates a second medal opportunity for athletes capable of mastering both disciplines.
For Ahn, however, that opportunity comes with a warning.
He cannot afford to treat virtual taekwondo as an extension of ordinary sparring.
The introduction of the stun gauge, health system, short rounds and mixed-gender, open-weight format creates tactical situations that do not exist in conventional competition.
Even experts acknowledge that it remains too early to determine whether traditional sparring specialists or poomsae athletes have a decisive advantage in the new format.
A new kind of Asian Games history awaits
The stakes could hardly be clearer.
Ahn Hyang-sik is attempting something unprecedented: to win one Asian Games gold medal with traditional taekwondo techniques and another through a virtual arena where his opponent may never physically touch him.
If he succeeds, he would not merely win two medals.
He would become a symbol of how quickly sport is changing—and how a centuries-old martial art can enter a digital world without abandoning the physical skills at its core.
The first test comes in Japan.
One mat. One VR arena. Two gold-medal dreams. And if Ahn can conquer both, South Korean taekwondo history could be rewritten twice in the same Games.
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