Basic Point System in TaeKwonDo According to WTF
Points are awarded for permitted, accurate, and powerful techniques to the legal scoring areas.
Light contact does not score any points.
In most competitions, points are awarded by four corner judges using electronic scoring tallies. Several A-Class tournaments, however, are now trialing electronic scoring equipment contained within competitors' body protectors. This limits corner judges to scoring only attacks to the head.
Recent controversy concerning judging decisions has prompted this to an extent, but this technology is still not universally preferred.
Beginning in 2009, a kick or punch that makes contact with the opponent's hogu (the body guard that functions as a scoring target) scores one point.
If a kick to the hogu involved a technique that includes fully turning the attacking competitor's body, so that the back is fully exposed to the targeted competitor during execution of the technique, an additional point is awarded; a kick to the head scores three points.
Punches to the head are not allowed.
As of March 2010, no additional points are awarded for knocking down an opponent (beyond the normal points awarded for legal strikes).
At the end of three rounds, the competitor with more points wins the match.
In the event of a tie at the end of three rounds, a fourth "sudden death" overtime round will be held to determine the winner after a one minute rest period.
Until 2008, if one competitor gained a 7-point lead over the other, or if one competitor reached a total of 12 points, then that competitor was immediately declared the winner and the match ended. These rules were abolished by the WTF at the start of 2009.
Blows are full force; if one competitor is knocked out by a legal attack, the attacking competitor is declared the winner, since the WTF allows knockouts in sparring competition.
There are certain rules that they must follow, however; some rules condemn name calling, punches to the head, grabbing.