Taekkyeon is a traditional Korean game with a dance-like appearance in some aspects; evolving into a modern combat sport. Goguryeo mural painting at the Samsil tomb shows two figures engaged in what appears to be a striking bout. However modern scholars point out that this is a conjecture,^[1]. Taekkyeon is also frequently romanized informally as Taekkyon or Taekyon.

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Modern proponents argue that Taekkyon is based on ancient Subak, (Shoubo in Chinese); the oldest Korean records used the Chinese classification diferentiating Subak from wrestling (Kajko)^[2]. It appears Taekkyon was an off-shoot from Subak, whith the latter split into two; yusul and Taekkyon,^[3] during the early Joseon Dynasty. Yusul means "soft way", it was never a seperate martial art. Taekkyeon uses "soft movements". Subak was upper body movements, while Taekkyeon was legwork. Nobody knows why the name Subak was dropped and Taekkyeon was held on to. The two are the same.

Taekkyon is documented as a folk game in an 1895 book on Korean sports and games.^[4]. The game Taekkyon took a severe blow when Neo-Confucianism grew in popularity, and then the Japanese occupation damaged the art even more to the extent the art was virtually extinct. Taekkyon has enjoyed a resurgence in the decades following the end of the Japanese colonial period in 1945. The last "Old-School" Taekkyon practitioner, Song Duk-Ki, maintained his practice of the Art throughout the Japanese occupation and subsequently laid the seeds for the arts' regeneration. He became the first human cultural asset in taekkyon. Important Intangible Cultural Asset No. 76" on June 1, 1983. It is the only Korean traditional martial art which possesses such a classification.