From 11 years in the Special Forces to saving lives as a firefighter, redemption on Physical: 100 and a growing obsession with HYROX, Hong Beom-Seok has built a life around doing hard things. Now at 40, the Korean athlete tells Baseline why he is nowhere near finished.
Hong Beom-Seok has spent most of his adult life discovering different versions of what it means to be strong.
There was Hong the Special Forces soldier, who spent almost his entire twenties in the military. Hong the firefighter, crawling through smoke-filled buildings in search of survivors. Hong the television competitor, who suffered an early and deeply disappointing exit from the first season of Netflix’s Physical: 100, only to return for Season 2 and make it all the way to the final.
And now there is Hong the HYROX athlete: still running, still lifting, still competing and still searching for the next benchmark.
The careers and arenas have changed. The mentality, however, has remained remarkably consistent.
“I spent my entire twenties in the Special Forces,” Hong told Baseline in an exclusive interview. “Looking back, I don’t regret that time at all.”
He believes the experiences, training and difficult moments he endured during those years became the foundation for everything that followed.
“Now, when I look back, nothing feels harder than that time,” he said. “So whatever happens, I think I’m able to respond to it positively.”
It is perhaps the simplest explanation for Hong Beom-Seok. He has spent a lifetime becoming comfortable with discomfort.
From football-loving kid to the Special Forces
Long before millions around the world knew his name, Hong was simply a kid who loved sport.
He briefly did track and field in elementary school before becoming obsessed with football, playing with friends for two to three hours almost every day despite never pursuing the sport at an elite level.
Sport was fun then. At 21, it became something more serious.
Hong joined the Special Forces, where running and strength training were no longer hobbies but requirements of the job. Over nearly 11 years in the military, physical preparation became ingrained in his everyday life.
His reason for choosing that path was surprisingly uncomplicated.
“I was young,” he recalled. “I really liked sports, and compared to my friends, I wanted to serve somewhere a little more special. I wanted to experience something that you couldn’t easily experience anywhere else.”
The decision would define his twenties.
Hong served in a counter-terror operations unit tasked with responding to serious threats. One of his most vivid memories came amid heightened tensions following the sinking of South Korean naval vessel Cheonan.
His unit prepared for a possible operation to the point where, according to Hong, they were close to potentially entering North Korea before the mission ultimately did not proceed.
But the military also came at a personal cost.
Hong married his high-school sweetheart at just 22 and eventually had two sons, yet the demands of his unit meant he could sometimes spend two or three weeks of a month away from home.
Eventually, he realised something had to change.
Trading one uniform for another
After nearly 11 years in the military, Hong began considering careers that could use the skills he had developed while giving him a different life.
The choice came down to the police or fire service. He chose firefighting. The reason was purpose.
With his abilities, Hong realised, he could potentially save lives every day. For five years, he worked as a 119 rescue firefighter.
Of the countless emergencies he responded to, one remains particularly vivid.
Hong had been dispatched to a fire in an old building. Smoke had consumed the stairwell so completely that visibility was almost nonexistent. Moving through the darkness by touch, his hand suddenly found something.
It was a child crouched on the staircase. She was around the same age as his eldest son.
Hong picked her up, gave her his oxygen mask and carried her out of the building. Her face had been blackened by smoke, with tracks from her tears cutting through the soot.
“She kept telling me how thankful she was while crying,” Hong recalled. “That image really stayed with me.”
It was another chapter in a life built around physical capability, but Hong’s next chapter would unexpectedly put that capability on display to a much larger audience – when he won the title of ‘Toughest Firefighter Alive’ at the 2018 World Firefighter Games.
That subsequently got him to start appearing on television for fitness-related reality shows.
The failure that brought him back to Physical: 100
Hong’s television career then led him to Netflix’s Physical: 100. But his first appearance did not go according to plan. He was eliminated early in Season 1, an outcome he admits left him deeply disappointed.
When the producers began preparing Season 2, however, they wanted to bring back one contestant from the original cast whom they believed had left the most potential unrealised.
They chose Hong. Ironically, he initially didn’t want to return. Hong revealed to Baseline that he rejected the invitation twice.
The fear wasn’t simply losing again. It was what another early elimination might do to him mentally. “If the same thing happened again and I was eliminated early, I thought my self-esteem would take a huge hit,” he said.
When the invitation came a third time, he finally agreed. Anyone who watched Season 2 knows what happened next.
This time, Hong didn’t disappear early. He went all the way to the final.
The comeback transformed his international profile, but Hong himself had not anticipated the scale of what was coming. After Season 2, he travelled to Taiwan for a HYROX race and was stunned to find more people approaching him for photographs than he experienced back home in Korea.
And there is one country where the response is even more intense. Singapore.
“The country that supports me the most is Singapore,” he said.
At most competitions, Hong says he can still move around the venue relatively freely. At HYROX Singapore, that becomes considerably harder. “There are so many photo requests that I can barely walk around.”
For a man once relatively unknown outside Korea, Physical: 100 had made Hong Beom-Seok global.
Why HYROX keeps bringing him back
These days, one of the clearest expressions of Hong’s competitive drive can be found at HYROX.
He first discovered the sport through training partner Song Byung-seok, who had competed at a HYROX event in Hong Kong. When Korea hosted its first race in 2023, Hong entered.
He has kept coming back ever since.
The format suits an athlete whose life has never fitted neatly into a single sporting category. Hong has spent decades building endurance and strength simultaneously, first because his profession demanded it and now because competition does.
His training reflects that commitment.
Hong told Baseline he runs every day, generally for between 40 minutes and an hour, before adding another hour to 90 minutes of HYROX-specific or strength work.
On a normal day without other commitments, that adds up to around two to three hours of training. Every day.
He has also turned that philosophy into a business.
Hong co-founded NED Gym — short for No Easy Day — which first opened in 2023 and has since become closely associated with the growing HYROX community in Korea. He has two branches in Korea and is opening a third one.
Its name doubles as a statement of intent.
“There is no easy day,” Hong explained. “Let’s give our best every single day.”
Even his coaches are expected to embody it. Hong says coaches at NED must maintain their own fitness, with HYROX rankers and competitive athletes forming part of the coaching team.
The philosophy is demanding without being exclusionary. The objective, according to Hong’s team, is still to create an environment where athletes across different levels can train safely and progress.
“No Easy Day” isn’t about destroying yourself. It’s about showing up.
Age is just a number, mostly
Hong turns 40 this year. For an athlete still chasing faster race times and podiums, it raises the obvious question: does he feel his age?
His answer is emphatic. “Age is just a number.” At least, that is what he continues to tell himself.
There is one concession. Recovery isn’t what it used to be.
In his younger years, Hong could train two or three times in a day and wake up the following morning ready for another dawn session.
Now, after a particularly hard day, simply getting out of bed the next morning can feel noticeably harder. “My recovery has become slower,” he admitted.
It hasn’t persuaded him to stop however. If anything, Hong appears to have become more systematic about how he trains, adapting rather than retreating. And there are still targets on the board.
The next challenge might be his most meaningful
For all the extraordinary experiences in Hong’s career, one of his future ambitions is surprisingly personal. His son will soon become old enough to compete in HYROX.
Hong wants them to race Doubles together. And he doesn’t simply want to finish. He wants them on the podium.
It is one of two HYROX targets Hong has set himself, alongside his pursuit of an ambitious Pro Singles time.
There are other competitions on his radar too. With hybrid racing continuing to expand globally, Hong intends to explore more events combining running and strength rather than restricting himself to HYROX alone.
There could even be another chapter in the Physical universe.
Hong revealed that he was unable to participate in Physical: Asia after completely tearing the ACL in his right knee while filming a football variety programme in Korea. He underwent surgery and received the call about participating roughly a month later.
The timing made competing impossible.
But asked whether he would return if another opportunity came? “I don’t know if they’ll call me again,” Hong said. “But if they do, I’ll go and do my best again.”
It is an answer that could almost serve as a summary of his entire career.
Hong Beom-Seok has been a soldier, firefighter, rescuer, television personality, athlete, entrepreneur and father.
He has won. He has been eliminated. He has been injured. He has started again.
And at 40, he is still looking for the next difficult thing.
Perhaps that is why No Easy Day feels less like the name of Hong’s gym than the philosophy of the man himself. Because for Hong Beom-Seok, the objective was never to find the easy route.
It was to become strong enough that the hard route no longer scared him.
