OVD Running Club Busan Come See Run Through South Korea

A Catchphrase From the Fish Market That Became a Crew Name

Walk through the chaos and colour of Jagalchi, Busan's famous fish market, and you will hear vendors calling out in the Gyeongsang dialect: "Oiso, Voiso, Dalliso." Come. See. Run. It is a phrase that has echoed through those market stalls for generations, part of the city's everyday soundtrack. When a group of runners in Busan sat down to choose a name for their new crew in late 2016, that phrase won the vote. It was not a calculated branding exercise. It was a decision that rooted the crew firmly in the place it came from, in the specific texture of Busan life, in something that belonged to this city and nowhere else. The name OisoVoisoDalliso was already alive before the crew existed. The crew simply picked it up, carried it out of the market, and took it to the streets. Donghyun Hah, the crew's founder, organised the first open run in November 2016. What began as an invitation to gather and move through the city together has grown steadily in the years since into something around 130 members strong. The crew is known today as OVD Running Club Busan, the abbreviation a compression of that full name, but the spirit of the original phrase remains intact at every run. Come. See. Run. Three words that also happen to describe exactly what the crew asks of anyone who shows up.

Busan as the Course, Not Just the Setting

Busan is not a backdrop for OVD Running Club Busan. It is the reason the crew exists. This is a city built on hills, harbour views, and a coastline that shifts in character every few kilometres. Running here means negotiating elevation, crossing neighbourhoods with distinct personalities, catching unexpected glimpses of the sea between apartment blocks, and feeling the salt air that follows you in from the coast. The crew takes all of that seriously, treating the city as the route rather than just the surface underfoot. The aim is not to log kilometres in the abstract but to actually feel and enjoy Busan, to encounter it at the pace of a run rather than the blur of a commute. That relationship with place extends beyond Busan. The crew also runs in Seoul, taking the same philosophy to the capital's streets and finding in a different urban landscape the same reasons to gather and move. This dual presence speaks to something important about what OVD Running Club Busan has built: a community that is curious about cities, that sees running as a way of reading a place rather than simply passing through it. The runs are slow enough to notice things. That is, by design, the point.

Togetherness Over Time on the Clock

There is a particular honesty in the way OVD Running Club Busan describes its approach to pace. The crew does not run fast. That statement is made plainly, without apology or qualification, and it defines everything about the experience of running with them. Pace anxiety, the quiet pressure that keeps some people from joining running groups at all, has no real home here. The priority is togetherness, the shared experience of being out in the city, moving at a rhythm that allows conversation, observation, and genuine enjoyment of the run rather than survival of it. This is a more deliberate position than it might first appear. Running culture, especially in urban crew settings, can become competitive by default, can reward speed and distance above all else. OVD Running Club Busan has pushed back against that tendency from the beginning, choosing instead to measure a good run by how people feel at the end of it, whether they laughed, whether they noticed something new about the city, whether they want to come back. Around 130 members have found that approach worth returning to, week after week, which suggests the philosophy is less a limitation and more a genuine draw.

Meeting at Gorilla Brewing Co on Saturdays

The crew gathers on Saturdays at Gorilla Brewing Co, a craft brewery that has become the fixed point around which OVD Running Club Busan organises its weekly rhythm. The choice of meeting place is fitting. Gorilla Brewing Co is the kind of spot that rewards lingering, and a Saturday run that starts and ends there carries with it the implicit promise that the run is only part of the occasion. The movement and the gathering are both valued equally, and neither is treated as a preliminary to the other. Saturday as a run day also carries a certain cultural weight in a city as busy as Busan. It is the moment in the week when the city loosens slightly, when streets feel a little different, when there is time to actually look around. OVD Running Club Busan has claimed that window deliberately, building its community around a day that encourages presence rather than rushing.

The Captains Who Keep the Crew Moving

Running a crew of around 130 people takes more than one set of hands. OVD Running Club Busan is guided today by a small team of captains who have kept the crew's original spirit intact while managing its growth. Patrick Choi serves as captain, alongside Donghyun who continues to lead as both founder and captain, and Taeung Bang, also a captain, who helps shape the crew's direction and presence on the road. The crew's activity can be followed on Strava, where runs are logged and the community's collective movement through Busan and Seoul is recorded. The fact that the founding team has remained involved through nearly a decade of running together says something real about the culture OVD Running Club Busan has built. Crews often change hands or lose their original energy as they grow. This one has held its shape. The name chosen at the beginning still means exactly what it meant then, and the crew that carries it still runs the way it always said it would: together, unhurried, and with genuine affection for the city moving beneath their feet.

An Open Invitation to the Streets of Busan

The crew's name is, at its simplest, a three-part instruction. Oiso: come to where we are. Voiso: look at what surrounds you. Dalliso: run. That sequence, borrowed from the vendors of Jagalchi and carried through nearly a decade of Saturday mornings, remains the clearest possible description of what OVD Running Club Busan offers. Not a training programme, not a race team, not a social club that happens to run. A crew that believes the city is worth seeing on foot, that the joy of moving through it together is sufficient reason to show up, and that the pace at which you do it matters far less than the fact that you came at all.