Runner to take on Busan-to-Seoul trail in 5 days
“Everyone is so fascinated by Seoul but … there is way more beauty and culture to see only hours
outside.
How many days would it take you to run from Busan to Seoul?
Chris Rae, a British national standing 197 centimeters tall, aims to do it in five days, or six at most.
“I’m gonna try to do it in five to six days,” he told The Korea Times, Sunday, a day after arriving in Seoul, a few days before taking the train down to Busan on Thursday. “The original idea was to do it over more days, but now I want to do it faster. If I do it in five, it’ll bring more attention to it than some random dude running up the country.”
He’s started a crowdfunding campaign on justgiving.com to raise funds through the run. The recipient charity hasn’t been decided yet, but he has his heart set on finding the right cause related to helping kids living in rural areas who lack direct access to education and medical services. The rules of the website mean he has 120 days after the run to find an appropriate charity.
“Will be totally honest, at the beginning of planning it all, I was very in the mindset of ‘This could be a great way to get a foot in the door for getting to South Korea or finding other ways I could benefit from it,’ but after visiting twice already and after everybody doing so much for us while here, I just ultimately want to give back and show how much this place actually means to me. Hopefully, the run and fundraiser can do that.”
This will be his third visit, and the first time not simply, for tourism. For his first visit in September 2022, he stayed in Seoul, and the two most memorable things about that visit were the heavy rain that flooded Gangnam and going to as many LG Twins baseball games as he could.
“We fell in love with the country,” he said. “I don’t quite know how to explain it. It’s just a feeling … like when you listened to Have Heart for the first time, and you could hear the passion and feeling in the music, haha, I dunno. Everything and everyone was just so good.”
On the second trip in April 2023, he spent 16 days traveling the country, seeing cities like Busan, Daegu,
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Cheongju and Gwangju. It was on that visit that he found out about the Four Rivers path and first thought about running its entire course.
“Everyone is so fascinated by Seoul but … there is way more beauty and culture to see only hours outside,” he said, “and nobody seems to care.”
Rae, 35, is heavily into running and skateboarding. He’s straight-edge, meaning he doesn’t drink alcohol, and he used to be the lead singer of Spanish hardcore punk band The Marriage. Although he holds a British passport, he’s grown up around the world, including the United States and across Asia and Africa, but most of his life has been spent in Spain.
“My upbringing is a bit crazy. I have lived around the world almost my whole life,” he said. “When my parents divorced, I found hardcore and skateboarding. That was my focus in life … the straight edge came after when I started to figure life out for myself and be on my own. It was a good path that kept me disciplined and focused.”
He’s done runs of comparable distances before in Spain, where he’s spent the bulk of his life. He’s used to rugged terrain, unpaved paths and high elevations.
For this run, he will be following the Four Rivers bike path, which he anticipates to be comparatively flat and well-paved compared to what he’s used to. “Having trained in those conditions doesn’t necessarily mean better, but I will find it somewhat easier to run a long flat path,” he said.
His original plan was to take 10 days and make bigger stops along the way in regional cities like Daegu and Chungju, North Chungcheong Province, but in the end, he decided to focus on the run.
“I want the run to be about what it’s going to be about,” he said.
He has run marathon distances and ultra distances in the last five years, but nothing like this, and never for a charitable cause. But he said with confidence “[I am] 100 percent sure that I can do such a challenge.”
He aims to spend six to eight hours running each day, traveling at least 65 kilometers per day to complete the winding 657km course from Busan to Seoul. The run will start at Busan River Culture Center, and he will reach Seoul Olympic Park. The next day, he plans to continue running the final leg from Seoul to Incheon, about 21 extra kilometers.
“We’re a weird bunch. Runners are weird,” he said. “It’s a very lonely and solitary aspect of life. It’s about being in my own head for a while. When you’re on your own, your mind goes places you don’t expect to go on a normal day. It’s about going on your own and figuring your shit out on your own, and you don’t come home until you figure your shit out. It’s suffering, but it’s enjoyable.”
Visit justgiving.com/crowdfunding/chrisxrunsxkorea for more information and to support Rae’s run.