History Depending on different theories, Tae Kwon-Do can be either 42 or 2000 years old. What does Tae Kwon-Do mean? Tae Kwon-Do is a Korean word that means, "the way of hands and feet". Originally, Tae Kwon-Do existed over 20 centuries ago in Korea. It was not considered a system of self-defense until the 1950s. That is when a group of martial artists came together to put the moves together under a single style of hand and feet fighting. They named their system Tae Kwon-Do. In th ...