Chadol Running Club A Cat Named Chadol and a Seoul Community

A Cat, a Crew, and Mapo-gu

The name came from a cat. That detail alone says something about how the Chadol Running Club was built: from the inside out, with personality, affection, and just enough quirk to make it stick. When founder Yoonsun Choi was searching for a name that would give her fledgling crew an identity, she looked no further than her beloved pet. Chadol, the cat, became Chadol, the club. The name anchored the logo, shaped the team character, and gave the whole thing a warmth that spreadsheets and mission statements rarely produce. It is the kind of founding detail that tells you more about a crew than any manifesto could. The story itself begins in October 2019, in the Mapo-gu district on the western bank of the Han River. Yoonsun and three neighbours were already running together in the mornings, the kind of casual habit that forms between people who share a building or a street and discover, almost by accident, that they share a pace. Other runners started showing up, drawn by the consistency and the easy atmosphere. The informal group became something more deliberate, and on October 27, 2019, the Chadol Running Club was formally born. What started as four people moving through their neighbourhood in the early morning had grown into a crew with a name, a logo, and a reason to keep growing.

Mangwon-dong on a Sunday Morning

Mangwon-dong is the kind of neighbourhood that rewards the people who move through it slowly enough to notice things. Its streets hold a particular mix of the everyday and the characterful: independent cafes tucked between older apartment blocks, weekend markets filling the pavements with produce and conversation, and the constant pull of the Han River just to the south. For the Chadol Running Club, this is home ground. Every Sunday at 9:30 am, the crew gathers here and sets off into the neighbourhood, covering anywhere between 5 and 10 kilometres depending on the session. The pace range, from around 4:40 to 6:00 minutes per kilometre, is wide enough to keep the group together and make the run accessible rather than exclusive. That range is not accidental. It reflects a deliberate choice to prioritise participation over performance. The Sunday run is not simply a loop and a stretch. The Chadol Running Club incorporates interval training and trail running into their schedule, giving regulars variety and giving newcomers a reason to come back. Interval sessions bring a sharper edge to the workout, while trail running opens up a different kind of Seoul entirely, one less defined by concrete and traffic and more by hillside paths and quieter air. The balance between these formats keeps things from going stale and keeps the group from settling into a single identity. This is a crew that runs in more than one mode.

Speed Is Not the Measure Here

From the beginning, Yoonsun built the Chadol Running Club around a clear principle: speed does not define a runner's worth. This is not an unusual thing to say in running communities, but it is less common to see it actually practised. Crews that claim to welcome all paces sometimes drift toward faster averages or quietly reward those who push the pace. The Chadol Running Club's range of 4:40 to 6:00 per kilometre, maintained and communicated openly, signals that this is a crew where slower runners are not merely tolerated but genuinely included. The emphasis is on mutual support, on arriving together and finishing together, on the conversation that happens between kilometres rather than just the split times. Around 20 members currently run with the crew, a number that keeps things intimate. A group this size can still gather for a run and have every person know every other person's name. There is no crowd to disappear into, no anonymity at the back of the pack. When you run with the Chadol Running Club, you are visible and known, which adds a kind of gentle accountability alongside the warmth. Yoonsun, who holds the roles of both founder and captain, has kept this intimacy intact as the crew has grown, and the atmosphere members describe reflects that care.

Life Beyond the Sunday Route

Running is the backbone of what the Chadol Running Club does, but the crew's social life extends well beyond Sundays in Mangwon-dong. Members organise bike rides, swimming sessions, and gatherings of various sizes, building the kind of cross-activity relationships that make a running crew feel less like a club and more like a neighbourhood of its own. These events do not happen because a committee decided they should; they happen because a group of people who genuinely like each other find reasons to spend time together outside of the format that first brought them together. Yoonsun also manages the crew's YouTube channel, a platform she uses to document running adventures and connect with the broader running community in Seoul and beyond. In a city with a dense and growing running culture, visibility matters, and the channel gives the Chadol Running Club a voice that reaches past the twenty or so people who show up on Sunday mornings. It also creates a record, a kind of moving archive of where the crew has been and what it has made together. For a crew named after a cat, there is a surprising amount of careful documentation going on.

Mapo-gu as a Running District

The choice to base the crew in Mapo-gu is not simply a matter of geography. The district has a character that suits the Chadol Running Club's particular rhythm. Mapo-gu sits at the edge of the Han River, giving runners access to the riverside paths that cut through the heart of Seoul. The Mapo Bridge, stretching across the Han with the city skyline behind it, is the kind of landmark that makes a long run feel like something more. The district also connects to the Hongdae area, one of Seoul's most energetic cultural zones, giving the surrounding streets a creative, independent-minded atmosphere that finds its way into the crew's personality. Running in Mapo-gu means navigating a city that is always in motion. The morning streets have a different energy from the afternoon ones; the riverside paths shift in feel with the seasons. Autumn brings cooler air and better visibility across the water. Winter sharpens every run. Spring fills the parks along the Han with cherry blossoms that make a 6:00-per-kilometre jog feel almost cinematic. The Chadol Running Club was founded in October, which means autumn was the first season this crew shared together. There is something fitting about that, given how autumnal Seoul can look when the light comes in low across the river and the neighbourhood is still quiet enough to hear footsteps on the pavement.

Seoul Running and Where Chadol Fits In

Seoul has a running culture that is genuinely diverse. Crews of different sizes, speeds, and identities have been forming across the city's districts for years, each shaped by the neighbourhood it calls home and the people who founded it. Among these, the Chadol Running Club occupies its own corner of the scene: small, intentional, and built on the kind of trust that comes from proximity. The crew's roots in a neighbour-to-neighbour friendship, four people who lived near each other and found they ran well together, give it a texture that larger or more strategically organised crews sometimes lack. There is nothing manufactured about how it started, and that origin still shows. In a city where running communities range from tightly coached performance groups to sprawling social networks, the Chadol Running Club sits somewhere that suits it well: close enough to know each other, organised enough to show up consistently, and relaxed enough to name the whole thing after a cat. Yoonsun has led this crew since its first Sunday morning in Mangwon-dong, and the crew she has built reflects her approach: grounded, welcoming, and genuinely connected. If you happen to be in Seoul on a Sunday and you are looking for company on a run, 9:30 am in Mangwon-dong is a good place to start.