The World Martial Arts Union(WoMAU) was founded on October 2, 2002, when 28 martial arts organizations from 26 countries participating in the Chungju Martial Arts Festival, which began in 1998 to promote Taekkyon as a national intangible cultural asset and developed into a world festival, agreed to play a central role in disseminating the value of peace and justice of martial arts.

Since then, WoMAU has preserved and promoted traditional martial arts through various international martial arts exchange projects such as general meetings, festivals, and seminars held regularly in Chungju city every year. As an extension of such activities, it knocked on UNESCO to become the world's first UNESCO non-governmental organization in the field of martial arts (approved as an official partner by UNESCO with consultative-status in 2009 and in 2010, accredited as an advisory NGO to the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage). This led to a change in UNESCO's perception that martial arts is also a part of human culture and it became a historical turning point for the spread of the perception that traditional martial arts should also be preserved as a valuable cultural heritage of humanity.

Following that, to lead international martial arts activities in close cooperation with UNESCO at the national level, WoMAU proposed the establishment of the International Center for Martial Arts (ICM) to the Korean government in 2011 and in the entire process of the establishment of the Center, it took charge of practical affairs and successfully made a UNESCO category 2 Institute attracted to Korea.

Furthermore, recently, the World Martial Arts Union launched an international exchange project under the name of the UNESCO listed Martial Arts Promotion Committee in order to seek business cooperation with UNESCO to put its goal of playing a central role of the world martial arts on track based on its global membership network.