Seoul International Marathon

Seoul International Marathon
The main gate to Gyeongbokgung Palace on Gwanghwamun Plaza, where the race begins
Date	Mid-March
Location	Seoul, South Korea
Event type	Road
Distance	Marathon
Established	1993
Official site	Gyeongju Marathon

The Seoul International Marathon, also known as the Dong-A Ilbo Seoul Marathon, is an annual marathon race that takes place in Seoul, South Korea. It is one of two annual races over the 42.195 km classic distance in the city, alongside the JoongAng Seoul Marathon which is held in November. It holds IAAF Gold Label Road Race status. First held in 1931, it is the third longest-running road running competition in Asia after the Hakone Ekiden and Chugoku Yamaguchi Ekiden in Japan.

The race has been integral to the elite level of the sport in Korea, as ten of the 28 South Korean national records in the marathon have been set at the competition. The day's races attract around 20,000 people on a yearly basis.

The genesis of the competition is traced back to the Youngdungpo Marathon, which was first held in 1931. It was not a true marathon and the looped course in the city measured roughly 50 ris (around or 23.3 km). The race was contested between fourteen of the country's top male runners and Seoul's Kim Eun-Bae won the first edition. Kim and the 1933 winner Sohn Kee-chung both went on to compete at the Olympic marathon, although they did so under the flag of Japan as Korea was part of the Japanese empire at that time.

This fact contributed to the suspension of the 1937 race: the event's sponsor, Korean broadsheet the Dong-A Ilbo, censored the Japanese flag in its reports of Sohn's marathon victory at the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the ruling Japanese military junta responded by suspending both the newspaper and the race. The race returned as an annual fixture from 1938 to 1940 but was again discontinued, initially due to World War II and later because of the Korean War. The race returned on April 1954 and Im Jong-Woo became the first person to win twice, taking back-to-back victories in 1954 and 1955.