True. In many developing countries yellow belts and green belts can get on the national Taekwondo because they learned how to kick and punch in numerous street fights. A good number of people who land on the national team of my native country Kenya couldn't pass the green belt test at our dojang here in the US and the dojangs of many MT posters. They don't know basics, poomsae, have never done kyupka or self defense. Basically they can fight, but they are not Taekwondoin. They wear Kukkiwon blackbelts awarded through the Kenya Taekwondo Association (with the assistance of the WTF) by virtue of their fighting record alone. The problem with this kind of system is you develop the type of "Taekwondoin" we saw kicking a referee (a master) in the mouth, with coaches urging them on, at the Beijing Olympics.
On a good note, things are getting better, at least in Kenya, with the increasing popularity of competion poomsae. It's making the KTA to begin emphasing better training in fundamanentals and developing better belt ranking systems. This was was being done in the earlier days of Taekwondo formation in Kenya in the late 1970s, to the 1980s when I started training in Taekwondo there. Things deteriorated in the 1990s when native Kenyans took the reigns of the KTA from the Korean pioneers.
