FOR a sport conceived as recently as the 1950s taekwondo has come a long way. It is one of only a handful of martial arts to be included in the Olympics (the others being boxing, judo and, depending on your definition of art, Greco-Roman and freestyle wrestling). Having been introduced as a demonstration event at the Koreans′ behest during the Seoul games of 1988, it became a fully fledged discipline in 2000. But besides winning over 70m adherents in 180 countries, over the years it also gained notoriety for its complex scoring system.

Fighters earn points for executing kicks (and the occasional punch) with “substantial impact” on the the opponent′s torso. What counts as “substantial”, though, was for long up to the judge, who had just one second to make a decision. Elite fighters can land up to three kicks in that time. At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, for instance, in the closing seconds of a bout between Sarah Stevenson of Britain and Chen Zhong from China, the judges failed to notice a high head-kick from Ms Stevenson which would have put her ahead by a point. She was ruled the loser, until the decision was reversed and she went on to win a bronze. In the same tournament Aaron Cook, another Briton, put his semi-final loss down to “horrendous judging”.

This will not be a problem at the upcoming world team championship in Aruba on November 22nd-25th. Fed up with controversy, in 2009 the World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) turned to technology. The upshot has been fairer judging and fewer empty histrionics (as in many sports, fighters would often try to distract judges by yells and such like)—in short, a better show all round.

Take the recent London Olympics. In the men’s heavyweight category, Anthony Obame from Gabon landed the match-winning kick on the buzzer against Bahri Tanrikulu, a three-time world champion from Turkey, before going on to take second place overall. It was the first and only medal for Gabon in Olympic history. Such close calls cannot be spotted even by the trained eye, insists Jin Song, the brains behind the automatic scoring system currenty used by the WTF.