North Korea has cancelled the Pyongyang marathon for unspecified reasons, a tour agency linked to the event has said.
British-owned Koryo Tours, which describes itself as the official partner of the marathon, said on Monday that it had received notice of the cancellation from North Korea's athletics association.
A message it attributed to the association said the marathon was being cancelled "due to some reasons".
The annual event was established in 1981 to celebrate the birth of North Korea's founding leader Kim Il Sung. The 2026 race was set to take place on 5 April.
Cancelled due to lack of entries. Fine print states that failure to complete is not an option and will result in the death penalty.
Well at least they aren’t handing out finisher medals at 18 miles.
Happy to share! Always a good ice-breaker to talk about this experience. So I did this in 2015 which I believe was the first year they opened the event up to foreigners. As someone else mentioned above, it's been TikTok-ified in recent years so the experience may be a bit different. We flew in from Beijing and there were ~250 foreigners who signed up (mostly Europeans, a handful of Americans). Some interesting bits that still stand out to this day:
- Every foreigner stayed at the same hotel which is on effectively an island on a river, so kind of Alcatraz-esque. They told us as soon as we got there not to go to the 2nd floor of the hotel. No explanation, just told us not to do it - maybe some psychological game? My understanding is that a few months later was when the UVA kid Otto Warmbier got detained there the reason was that he ventured to the forbidden 2nd floor.
- The race was pretty barren in terms of amenities and was a 6.5 mile loop that we went through 4 times. Running under the giant "Peace Arch" was pretty cool and we probably got to see more of the the city than any other tourists. Finishing in the Kim-Il-Sung National stadium was pretty cool - it was packed with 50,000+ Koreans doing coordinated chants. They were probably forced to be there.
- I finished second in the foreigner division (242, absolutely fell apart after coming through 20 at 2hrs). Got to go up in the middle of the stadium on a podium and received an ornamental vase and 2 pretty cool propaganda posters. I have them in my office but my wife hates them.
- After the marathon we went on a weeklong heavily propagandized tour of the country. Like "here is a factory that shows you how industrious North Koreans are." One of the weirder places we went was to a local indoor water park to see how "North Koreans spent their leisure time." At the entrance to the park was a life-sized statute of Kim Jong-Il wearing a Hawaiian shirt and holding a surfboard; we had to bow to it before entering. I had to refrain from laughing as to not show disrespect, but it was bizarre.
- We were specifically asked to bring cigarettes for our tour guides, so I loaded up on Marlboros and was chain-smoking with the tour guide/minders for the rest of the trip. This was when I was 25 so thought it was cool.
-Another bizarre side-trip was to the national film-making studio. Apparently Kim-Il-Sung had kidnapped from South Korea his favorite film-maker back in the 1960s or something. My tour guide said he loved Fast and Furious movies; unfortunately this was shortly after Paul Walker died so I had to break the bad news to him.
- We went to an elementary school one day and the art/playgrounds/etc were so militarized in theme - it was bizarre. Pictures of missiles all on the walls and the playground was all toy tanks, planes, etc. So they instill the militarized society propaganda from an early age.
I have lots of pictures and can look to find a way to share if folks are interested.
Happy to share! Always a good ice-breaker to talk about this experience. So I did this in 2015 which I believe was the first year they opened the event up to foreigners. As someone else mentioned above, it's been TikTok-ified in recent years so the experience may be a bit different. We flew in from Beijing and there were ~250 foreigners who signed up (mostly Europeans, a handful of Americans). Some interesting bits that still stand out to this day:
- Every foreigner stayed at the same hotel which is on effectively an island on a river, so kind of Alcatraz-esque. They told us as soon as we got there not to go to the 2nd floor of the hotel. No explanation, just told us not to do it - maybe some psychological game? My understanding is that a few months later was when the UVA kid Otto Warmbier got detained there the reason was that he ventured to the forbidden 2nd floor.
- The race was pretty barren in terms of amenities and was a 6.5 mile loop that we went through 4 times. Running under the giant "Peace Arch" was pretty cool and we probably got to see more of the the city than any other tourists. Finishing in the Kim-Il-Sung National stadium was pretty cool - it was packed with 50,000+ Koreans doing coordinated chants. They were probably forced to be there.
- I finished second in the foreigner division (242, absolutely fell apart after coming through 20 at 2hrs). Got to go up in the middle of the stadium on a podium and received an ornamental vase and 2 pretty cool propaganda posters. I have them in my office but my wife hates them.
- After the marathon we went on a weeklong heavily propagandized tour of the country. Like "here is a factory that shows you how industrious North Koreans are." One of the weirder places we went was to a local indoor water park to see how "North Koreans spent their leisure time." At the entrance to the park was a life-sized statute of Kim Jong-Il wearing a Hawaiian shirt and holding a surfboard; we had to bow to it before entering. I had to refrain from laughing as to not show disrespect, but it was bizarre.
- We were specifically asked to bring cigarettes for our tour guides, so I loaded up on Marlboros and was chain-smoking with the tour guide/minders for the rest of the trip. This was when I was 25 so thought it was cool.
-Another bizarre side-trip was to the national film-making studio. Apparently Kim-Il-Sung had kidnapped from South Korea his favorite film-maker back in the 1960s or something. My tour guide said he loved Fast and Furious movies; unfortunately this was shortly after Paul Walker died so I had to break the bad news to him.
- We went to an elementary school one day and the art/playgrounds/etc were so militarized in theme - it was bizarre. Pictures of missiles all on the walls and the playground was all toy tanks, planes, etc. So they instill the militarized society propaganda from an early age.
I have lots of pictures and can look to find a way to share if folks are interested.
For pictures, they did not inspect my camera but they were very clear when you could and could not take photos. And, outside of the marathon, I was never more than 100ft away from some sort of minder.
I can't believe I did not take a picture of the Hawaiian shirt Kim Jong-Il, but that moment still vividly stands out to me.
A few additional things that came to mind as I reflected on this again:
-Cutoff time when I ran was 4hrs. Several people in my tour group didn't hit that and were picked up in a black car as soon as they fell below that pace at certain mile marks. Kind of scary getting scooped up by a black car in Pyongyang!
- They had a daily newspaper and one morning had a front page article on a recent police officer shooting of a black man in the U.S. I asked my tour guide to translate and he basically said it was about how terrible and racist the U.S. is. I found it interesting that was front page news in Pyongyang.
-We took the subway several times and it was absolutely ornate and, outside of Moscow, the coolest subway I've ever been on. I appreciate we likely only went to the fanciest stations.
- One day we went to a museum with all of these foreign "gifts" to the Supreme Leader. This included the Chicago Bulls-signed basketball that Madeleine Albright had given back in the day. There were also hundreds of "honorary diplomas" that had been bestowed on the Kims; several of these were from bogus online US colleges that I imagine anyone can print off at home; but no reason for North Koreans to know that and probably thought these prestigious foreign universities were honoring their leader
This post was edited 7 minutes after it was posted.
Reason provided:
added some thoughts
Just wanted to say thank you for sharing. What an incredible collection of photos. I am blown away by the militarized art/playground at the children's school.
What a cool experience, and I am glad you made it back home safely.