General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Marathon (말아톤) (2005 film)

Marathon (말아톤) is a 2005 South Korean drama film directed by Chung Yoon-chul (정윤철), starring Cho Seung-woo as an autistic young man who trains for a marathon with his devoted mother and a reluctant former champion runner as coach.¹ It was released in South Korea on January 27, 2005, runs 117 minutes, and sold 5,148,022 tickets.² The film is modeled on the real story of Bae Hyung-jin (배형진), an autistic runner who completed the 2001 Chuncheon Marathon and had been the subject of the KBS documentary program Human Theater.³ It won Best Film at the 42nd Grand Bell (Daejong) Film Awards and made its director and lead actor award-season mainstays of 2005.⁴

Key fact	Detail
Release	January 27, 2005, South Korea; 117 minutes; drama; all-ages rating²
Director and writers	Chung Yoon-chul's feature debut; screenplay by Chung Yoon-chul, Song Ye-jin, and Yoon Jin-ho¹
Cast	Cho Seung-woo (Yoon Cho-won), Kim Mi-sook (Kyung-sook), Lee Ki-young (Son Jeong-wook), Baek Sung-hyun, Ahn Nae-sang²
Real-life model	Bae Hyung-jin, who finished the 2001 Chuncheon Marathon and was featured on KBS Human Theater³
Box office	5,148,022 admissions; passed 5 million on March 19, 2005, its 52nd day of release²^•⁵
Major awards	Grand Bell Awards 2005: Best Film, Best Actor, Best New Director, Best Screenplay, Best Music, Best Planning⁶
Production	Cineline Two Co., Ltd.; distributed by Showbox; music by Kim Jun-seong²

Spoilers

Plot

The film follows Yoon Cho-won, a 20-year-old autistic man with the intellectual level of a five-year-old, who loves zebras and Choco Pie and has run since childhood.² His mother Kyung-sook, devastated by his diagnosis when he was young, discovers that his running ability is exceptional and trains him steadily, setting the goal of a sub-three-hour marathon.² A former famous marathoner, Son Jeong-wook, arrives at Cho-won's school to perform community service after a drunk-driving offense, and Kyung-sook persuades him to coach her son.² Jeong-wook initially finds Cho-won a burden, but as they spend time together he recognizes the young man's extraordinary endurance and begins training him in earnest.²

The Korean Film Archive's synopsis notes that the film looks beyond the two obvious viewpoints, the son's triumph over disability and the mother's devoted love, to show the family's actual weariness, including the parents' discord and the sense of alienation felt by the younger, non-disabled brother.³ A Cine21 critic's synopsis frames the story as a question of whether the mother, unable to get an answer from Jeong-wook to his charge that she confuses love of a child with obsession, is exploiting a son who cannot yet express likes and dislikes for himself.²

The real-life model

The film is based on Bae Hyung-jin, who completed the 2001 Chuncheon Marathon and became the subject of a KBS Human Theater documentary.³ In 2002, at age 19 or 20, he entered a triathlon in Sokcho, Gangwon Province, completing a 3.8 km swim, a 180.2 km cycle, and a 42.195 km run in 15 hours 6 minutes 32 seconds.⁷ When the film opened, Bae was 22 years old and working at a musical-instrument parts assembly factory, where he had not missed a day of work since being hired two years earlier.⁸ In March 2005, shortly after the release, he completed a 21 km half marathon in 1 hour 50 minutes; an MBC report noted that the film had drawn 4 million viewers in its first five weeks.⁹ The film's success prompted KBS to produce a new documentary on Bae's current life in 2005.³

Production

Marathon was the feature directorial debut of Chung Yoon-chul.¹ To prepare for the role, Cho Seung-woo visited Bae Hyung-jin at his home and at the school he attended, observed his daily life, and ran alongside him in a marathon event.¹⁰ The climactic race was filmed on the day of the actual 2004 Chuncheon International Marathon, with the cast and crew shooting on the real course and field with the organizers' cooperation; Cine21 describes it as a crowd scene using five cameras and helicopter filming, the largest of its kind in Korean film history.¹⁰ The production cost was reported at 2.8 billion won, which the director described as a small film facing strong competitors including Another Public Enemy.¹¹

Box office

The film opened in second place behind Another Public Enemy during the Lunar New Year season, then took first place at the box office in its second week.¹²^•⁵ It recorded the top reservation rate for six consecutive weeks and the top box-office position for five consecutive weeks, and passed 5 million national admissions on March 19, 2005, in its eighth week of release, with 5,005,434 admissions nationwide and 1,511,724 in Seoul.⁵ Its final cumulative total was 5,148,022 admissions.² The Korean Film Council's retrospective notes that the film was the Lunar New Year champion of 2005 and elevated Cho Seung-woo to stardom.¹³

Awards

At the 42nd Daejong (Grand Bell) Film Festival in July 2005, the film won Best Film and five other trophies.⁴ The full Grand Bell list included Best Film, Best Actor (Cho Seung-woo), Best New Director (Chung Yoon-chul), Best Screenplay (Chung Yoon-chul, Song Ye-jin, Yoon Jin-ho), Best Music (Kim Jun-seong), and Best Planning (Seok Myeong-hong).⁶ Chung also won Best New Director at the Blue Dragon Film Awards, the Chunsa Film Festival, the Golden Cinematography Awards, and the Director's Cut Awards, and the film took the Baeksang Arts Awards Grand Prize in the film category along with Best Actor and Best Screenplay.⁶ Cho Seung-woo won his first international acting honor at the Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers film festival in Sanya, China, taking Best International Actor in the foreign-film section.¹⁴

Reception and legacy

On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an 88% Tomatometer from a small number of critic reviews and an audience score from more than 1,000 ratings.¹⁵ A disability-studies analysis published in Korea describes Marathon as the first Korean film to lead social interest and improved awareness of people with autistic disability, while also noting limits in its portrayal, such as depicting the autistic protagonist as exceptionally pure or gifted and giving insufficient attention to independent living through inclusive education and vocational rehabilitation.¹⁶ A Korean Film Council retrospective places the film among the archetypal Korean tearjerkers, combining sports film, family drama, and inspirational melodrama.¹³ In a 2008 survey by the ticketing site Yes24 on the best characters in Korean film, Yoon Cho-won ranked fourth with 10 percent of votes.¹⁷

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026