What Sports Koreans Actually Play — They Walk, Climb, and Gather at Dawn

Six in the morning. An elementary school field in Eunpyeong-gu, Seoul. It is still dark. Twenty men in shared vests gather in front of the goalposts. One blows a whistle. The average age is around fifty. By seven-thirty the game is over, and everyone heads to work — no shower, no fuss. This group is called a jogi-chukguhoe, an early-morning soccer club. Some of these have been rolling on the same field at the same hour for over forty years.

At the same moment, at the Ui-dong entrance to Bukhansan. People are tightening their hiking boot laces as a gimbap truck pulls up. It is six in the morning and there is already a line.

Spend enough time in Korea and you start to notice: this country runs on an exercise timetable. Dawn is for soccer and hiking. Evening is for the gym and the Han River. Weekends are for mountains and park golf courses. And nowhere on that timetable does taekwondo appear.

What sport do Koreans do most?

Walking. By a landslide.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism asked 9,000 Koreans aged 10 and older for the 2025 National Sports Survey. Here is what they found. 62.9% of the population exercises at least once a week for 30 minutes or more. Ask what they do, and the answers diverge.

🏃 Sports Participation Ranking in Korea (2025 National Sports Survey, multiple responses allowed)

* Swimming and golf figures from 2024 survey

Two things jump out from this list. First, the top three are all solo sports. Second, they are all free or nearly free.

The spending data confirms this is no accident. Koreans spend an average of 62,000 won per month on exercise. That is up 16,000 won from the previous year — and it is still only that. On top of that, 40.8% of respondents said they spend absolutely nothing on exercise.

When asked how long a typical session lasts, 67.3% said between one hour and ninety minutes. That is, almost precisely, one session at the neighborhood gym, or one big loop around an apartment complex.

Why do Koreans climb mountains so obsessively?

Because the subway takes them there. That is the whole answer.

There are few cities in the world where you can reach a national park entrance within an hour from anywhere downtown. Bukhansan is a walk from Suyu Station (Line 4) or Bukhansan Ui Station (Ui-Sinseol Line). Gwanaksan is a few bus stops from Seoul National University Station. So the numbers look like this.

Hiking posted the largest gain of any sport in the 2025 survey — up 5.0 percentage points year on year. The pandemic-era boom receded for a while, and now it is climbing again.

There are a few unspoken rules in the mountainscape. One: the gear is overkill. You will routinely see people outfitted for the Himalayas on a three-hour trail. Koreans joke about this themselves. Two: you greet people. On a narrow path, strangers trade annyeonghaseyo as they pass. Three: you eat something at the summit. Gimbap, boiled eggs, tangerines, and a thermos.

And then, after the descent: makgeolli and pajeon. Every mountain entrance is lined with restaurants that sell exactly this combination and nothing else. This is why hiking in Korea is both exercise and social ritual. The climb is the pretext; the eating afterward is the point, some say.

📍 Bukhansan Ui Station — Open in Naver Map

How running became the coolest sport in Korea

Something shifted along the Han River around 2024.

The jogging and running participation rate jumped from 4.8% in 2024 to 7.7% in 2025 — the steepest growth curve of any sport. Marathon events hit 254 in a single year, with combined participants surpassing one million. The Seoul International Marathon drew a record 40,000 runners.

More interesting than the numbers is the shift in character. A decade ago, marathons in Korea were a middle-aged man’s solitary trial of endurance. Now they are a running crew culture dominated by people in their 20s and 30s. On a set weekday evening, they gather outside a subway station, run 7 to 10 kilometers together, and finish with beers nearby. There are well over a hundred active crews in Seoul alone.

From a traveler’s perspective, one fact here matters a lot: these running crews are open to foreigners. Most take sign-ups through Instagram. There are no dues or very low ones. No pace requirements. Seoul city even runs official, free programs.

📍 Ttukseom Hangang Park — Open in Naver Map

So what about team sports?

If individual sports dominate participation rates, the club statistics tell a completely different story. Here, soccer is number one.

⚽ Sports Club Membership Ranking (2024 National Sports Survey)

The real information in this table is the rightmost column. Club sports in Korea happen at dawn.

The early-morning soccer club, or jogi-chukguhoe, is practically an institution. The name means exactly what it says: soccer played early in the morning. Most members are in their 40s through 60s. They rent neighborhood elementary school fields on weekend mornings. The game is always followed by a move to a nearby haejangguk (hangover soup) restaurant — that is part of the set. News of promotions, job changes, and children’s weddings circulates over these bowls. It is a sports club and, at the same time, the social infrastructure of middle-aged Korean men.

Badminton is a slightly different creature. Neighborhood gymnasiums and school halls fill up from 5 a.m. Shoes and a racket are all you need; it is indoors, so weather is irrelevant. The density of badminton enthusiasts in Korea is strangely, almost absurdly high by global standards. Step onto a court and you will understand: the local club ajumma’s smash is far scarier than you think.

And what is park golf?

This is the fastest-growing square on Korea’s sports map over the last five years.

Park golf is a scaled-down version of golf played on park grass with a single wooden club. Holes are short, gear costs a fraction of regular golf, and it does not demand full-body strength. It landed in a country entering super-aged society at exactly the right moment.

Including unregistered players, the total is estimated at 400,000 to 500,000. If you have ever walked along the Han River banks or a local stream and seen a group of seniors in colorful caps hitting balls on a lawn, that was park golf. Local governments are racing to build courses, and the resulting turf wars and reservation battles have made the news.

Golf and screen golf — the money part

The same survey asked Koreans something else: given more time, what would you do? Given more money, what would you do?

With more time: swimming (16.2%). With more money: golf (19.0%).

Those two answers map the structure of Korea’s sports market perfectly. Golf is the sport people want to play but cannot easily afford, so Korea has built the world’s largest industry for moving that desire indoors: screen golf.

There are roughly 8,650 screen golf venues across the country. That is convenience-store density, urban saturation. A round at an actual golf course runs upward of 450,000 won; the average monthly spend on screen golf is around 170,000 won. For the price of a bottle of soju after work, you get 18 holes in two hours. This model has become the norm.

For travelers, screen golf is a surprisingly solid evening activity. You rent a private room, you can order drinks and snacks, and even someone who has never held a club can figure it out within two hours. It is an especially good backup plan on rainy days.

Why people do not exercise

You have to look at the other side of the numbers to really see the country. Here is why people who do not exercise regularly say they do not.

Lack of time is the overwhelming number one. But the answers split by age: people under 50 say they have no time; people in their 60s say they have no interest; people 70 and older say their health will not allow it.

Participation is also uneven. From the 20s through the 60s, rates hover around 65%. Teenagers drop to 43.2%. This is the statistic of a country where hagwon and entrance exams have consumed adolescent exercise hours entirely. It is a problem Korean society openly acknowledges.

What travelers can actually do

In the end, what this country loves is doing things together

On paper, Korean exercise looks like a collection of solo pursuits. People walk, run, and lift weights alone.

But go to the actual places and you see every one of those solo sports forming groups. Hiking becomes a sanakhoe (mountaineering club). Running becomes a crew. The gym becomes a loose community of faces who show up at the same hour. There is probably more to showing up at a field at 6 a.m. than a pure love of soccer.

The next time you find yourself awake early in Seoul, step outside. In the hours before the city opens, there are already people in motion. If you want to understand what kind of country Korea is, that time of day tells the most honest story.