Saekung Race

The Saekung Race (: 새궁경주) is an international five-sport event held every two years in the Yeosan Islands, where it was first created in 1962. The event draws inspiration from the annual Bamuji Competition (바무지경쟁), a national tournament based around the Yeosani tradition of the same name, Bamuji (바무지). The tradition pays homage to the ancestors of the Yeosani people who migrated from continental Kesh, across the West Tethys Ocean with very little resources. Unlike the Saekung Race, which is played on a national scale across the entire Yeosani archipelago, Bamuji as a tradition is commonly practiced within one island, while the Bamuji Competition is strictly regional, never expanding across more than five islands. The Yeosani Bamuji Committee (YBC) and the Ministry of Culture of the Yeosan Islands organize the Race, oversee the preparations, and accept or reject international applying teams. For each individual sport, gold medals are awarded for the first place, silver medals are awarded for second place, and bronze medals are awarded for the third place, and the team that finishes the entire Race in first place is awarded a cash prize.

History

 * Main article: Bamuji

On 1 July 1498 on Maeil Day in the Yeosan Islands, a Yeosani holiday that commemorates the arrival of the Maeil people from East Kesh, the Yeosani people started the sport-tradition of Bamuji, whose name is an amalgamation of the first syllables of the words 바람 (baram; meaning 'wind'), 물 (mul; meaning 'water'), and 지면 (jimyeon; meaning 'ground'). The tradition consists on paying homage to the ancestor of the Yeosani people, the Maeil, who arrived to the Yeosani archipelago in the first millennium BCE while, by moving across the islands that make up the territory of the Yeosan Islands only using primitive technology, such as canoes, rafts, and small sailing boats, against the landscape's natural elements (wind, sea, and land). Originally, this tradition was made to include only running and swimming activities, concluding with a gratitude prayer to honor the ancestors. However, with time and the globalization of sports from across the world, the tradition became more sport inclined, eventually adding cycling in the 19th century with the invention of the bicycle, and most recently paragliding in the late 20th century.

The Bamuji Competition was created in 1898, when the Yeosan Islands was still a colony of the Empire of Akiteiwa. The event was established with the intention of promoting and spreading cultural unity and awareness across the Yeosani population, many of which had been born to Akitei parents, or spoke as a first language. The Competition was first organized by a group of Yeosani teachers in the capital city of Saekung, designed to only take place in the archipelago's largest island of Ilsan on 1 July 1989, to honor both Maeil Day and the creation of Bamuji as a tradition. At this time, the activities that comprised Bamuji were, , (replaced by  in 1914), and. The Competition started in the city of Saekung and had a two intermediary stops within the same island: the city of Hangeum to the northeast, and Jeonbyeol to the northwest. Because of casualties between the cities of Saekung and Hangeum, the first Competition was cut short, as to prevent more injuries and accidents among the competitors. Because of this, and as a mode of prevention of more accidents, later that year on 23 December 1989, the Yeosani Bamuji Committee (YBC) was created as an informal organization tasked with the responsibility of ensuring the competitors' safety and better organize the event. The second Competition took place two years after its predecessor on 1 July 1900, during which more than 500 Yeosani people participated. The winner of this first successful Competition was Hwan Tae-byeol, who was awarded 50 Imperial Kia.

The Bamuji Competition grew in popularity among the population of the Yeosan Islands as time went by, with news of the event reaching the people of continental Kesh toward the start of the 20th century. In 1910, the Competition saw its first non-Yeosani competitors, Yamashita Imari and Imai Yasuhiko, an Akitei couple that had become aware of the Competition from merchants who would travel back and forth between the Yeosan Islands and mainland Akiteiwa. The Competition's international acclaim kept gaining traction as radio stations in mainland Kesh began to broadcast and narrate the games taking place, eventually drawing in more international travellers seeking to participate in the event. It wasn't until 1962, a decade after the independence of the Yeosan Islands, based on the Bamuji Competition's popularity across Kesh and East Artemia, that the newly established Ministry of Culture, along with the, now official, Yeosani Bamuji Committee, decided to create the Saekung Race, specifically designed with the objective of protecting the Bamuji Competition by keeping it exclusive to Yeosani people, while simultaneously allowing foreigners who wished to participate to do so in a way that remained culturally appropriate, and acting as an effort to bring people of Kesh together after the events of the Great Kesh War during the 1950s.

The Saekung Race, named after the capital city of the Yeosan Islands in honor of the first Bamuji Competition, was designed in much larger scale than its regional predecessor, expanding across all islands in the country and over a one-week long period. The Race included all sports considered part of Bamuji up until that point: running, swimming, cycling and sailing. On its inauguration, 1 July 1962, the Saekung Race hosted XXX teams from XXX different nations and awarded a total of ? gold medals, ? silver medals, and ? bronze medals. In 1998, Bamuji, as a result, the Saekung Race, was reformed to include paragliding as one of its officially designated activities.