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No carrot, no stick: Why Korean marathon runners fall behind globally

Published: 05 May. 2026, 05:00

Runners set off at a half marathon sponsored by JTBC in Goyang, Gyeonggi, on April 6, 2025. [KIM JONG-HO]

Despite a boom in domestic marathons, Korea’s elite runners are falling behind global rivals, with coaches pointing to a system that dulls competition and offers little incentive to push for faster times.

The decline in Korea’s once-formidable edge in the sport was made apparent on April 26, when Sebastian Sawe of Kenya crossed the finish line at the London Marathon in 1 hour, 59 minutes and 30 seconds — the first officially recognized sub-two-hour marathon.

No Korean marathoner has ever come close to posting a race time even close to two hours.

Hwang Young-cho, now head coach of a marathon team under the Korea Sports Promotion Foundation, watched the result from half a world away and summed up the state of Korean distance running in a single sentence.

“There’s essentially no answer,” he said.

While the fastest Korean elite male runner at the Daegu Marathon in February finished the race in 2 hours, 20 minutes and 43 seconds, he was bested by the top female finisher from Kenya, who crossed the line in 2 hours, 19 minutes 35 seconds. Even the second-place female runner from Ethiopia finished ahead of every Korean man in the field.

It was a result that would have seemed unthinkable a generation ago, when Hwang won gold at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics marathon and Lee Bong-ju claimed victory at the Boston Marathon in 2001.

The Korean men’s record today stands at 2 hours, 7 minutes and 20 seconds, more than a quarter-century after it was set by Lee. Since 2010, only two Korean runners have dipped below 2 hours and 10 minutes. Further, not a single Korean qualified for the marathon at the 2024 Paris Olympics, where the qualifying time was 2 hours, 8 minutes and 10 seconds.

Left: Hwang Young-cho celebrates after winning the marathon at the Barcelona Olympics on Aug. 9, 1992. Right: Sohn Kee-chung finishes first at the Berlin Olympics on Aug. 9, 1936. [JOONGANG ILBO]

Even amateur runners are beginning to close the gap. At the Seoul Marathon in March, the masters division winner Kim Ji-ho posted a time of 2 hours, 17 minutes and 12 seconds — good enough for sixth place overall among Korean men. Of the 34 elite runners who took part in the same race, 29 finished behind him.

“It’s not uncommon now for club runners to catch up,” Hwang said.

The problem, experts say, is not a lack of participation. If anything, Korea is in the midst of a running boom. Hundreds of races are held nationwide each year, and full marathons with more than 10,000 participants are no longer unusual.

The problem, observers say, is not a lack of interest, but rather a system that gives runners little reason to push beyond their usual limits.

Top domestic runners rarely face off in the same race as they effectively coordinate to take part in different events from each other. The result is a diluted competitive field, with little pressure to push for faster times.

Another problem is that prizes — not race times — often determine contracts and salaries, particularly for athletes on corporate or municipal teams. With many teams backed by local governments, funding tends to follow medal counts at national competitions instead of performance benchmarks.

“The number of teams keeps growing,” said a former coach who once oversaw multiple national record holders. “That makes it difficult for coaches to push athletes harder because they just don’t have the leverage.”

The contrast with global powerhouses is stark.

In Iten, Kenya, thousands of full-time runners train together on dirt roads each morning, driven by the prospect of prize money and a path out of poverty. In Japan, where runners have posted times of around 2 hours and 4 minutes in recent years, local marathon running is rooted in a culture of discipline and striving to achieve personal bests.

Korean elite runners, critics say, fall somewhere in between — with neither the urgency of Kenya nor the perfectionist edge of Japan.

As long as salaries and national-level medals are assured, runners have little incentive to push beyond their usual limits.

The result is a system that, in the words of some observers, has come to resemble a stable public-sector job: predictable, secure and increasingly detached from the demands of world-class competition.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY KIM YOUNG-JU,KIM HYO-KYOUNG [[email protected]]