Tajikistan's Sambo Wrestling Federation says its athletes will not attend the world championships in South Korea next month because they were refused entry visas, according to Radio Liberty’s Tajik Service. 

The federation reportedly cited South Korean sambo officials as saying that visa requests from the members of the Tajik national sambo team had been rejected because several Tajik wrestlers who took part in a tournament in South Korea in 2016 never returned to Tajikistan and stayed in the country illegally.

Tajik national team head coach Nosir Bozorov told RFE/RL on October 15 that at the heart of the issue are four Tajik wrestlers who participated in an international competition in South Korea and subsequently failed to return home.

Officials at the South Korean Embassy in Dushanbe refused to comment on the issue, saying that the information regarding visa refusal can be given only to individuals who requested such visas.

The World Sambo Championships are the main championships in Sambo and Combat Sambo.  Organized by the Fédération Internationale de Sambo (FIAS), this year’s World Sambo Championships will take place in South Korea from November 7-11.  

Sambo is a Soviet martial art and combat sport.  It originated in the Russian SFSR in Soviet Union.  The word "SAMBO" is a portmanteau for samozashchita bez oruzhiya, which literally translates as "self-defense without weapons."  Sambo is relatively modern, since its development began in the early 1920s by the Soviet NKVD and Red Army to improve hand-to-hand combat abilities of the servicemen.  It was intended to be a merger of the most effective techniques of other martial arts.