Korotkevich was born in Gomel, southeastern Belarus. His parents, Vladimir and Lyudmila Korotkevich, are programmers in the mathematics department at Francysk Skaryna Homiel State University. At age 6, he became interested in his parents' work. When he was 8, his father designed a children's game he could use to learn programming. His mother consulted departmental colleague Mikhail Dolinsky, who gave Korotkevich a small book to read. Dolinsky, one of the top computer science teachers in Belarus, recalled, "A month went by, and then another one... No news from Gena. Then suddenly Lyudmila comes by and brings me a programming notebook: when summer and football were over, her son sat at the computer. As a second-grader at a national competition, he took second place, which gained him an automatic entry into a technical university without taking any entrance exams. Somehow he solved the problem of a body immersed in water. At that time, Gena didn't even know about Archimedes' principle of buoyancy." Korotkevich first gained global attention when he qualified for the 2006 International Olympiad in Informatics at the age of 11, a world record by a large margin. He took the silver medal at his first IOI event and received gold medals from 2007 to 2012. To date, he is the most successful competitor in IOI's history. At the 2009 IOI in Plovdiv, the then 14-year-old Korotkevich said of his success, "I try various , and one of them is the right one. I am no genius. I am simply good at it." He said he spent no more than three to four hours each day at the computer, and his preferred hobbies are football and table tennis. In the fall of 2012, he moved to Russia to attend ITMO University. In the summer of 2013, he helped ITMO defeat Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the University of Tokyo to win the 37th International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals, held in St. Petersburg. He also won the Google Code Jam in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. In a 2014 interview, Korotkevich said he was unsure of his career plans after graduation. "What happens next is yet to be decided," he said. "I don't have any concrete or long-term plans. I've only finished my sophomore year at university. For me, it's important to get an education first and then decide about working. Maybe I'll go into science. But again, I really have not decided yet." In a 2017 interview, Korotkevich said "I've gotten job offers from Google and Yandex several times, but didn't take them... I am getting a Masters in Computer Science at ITMO, afterward I think that's what I'll do. "
International Olympiad in Informatics: He won absolute first place in 2009, 2010, 2011; a gold medal in 2007, 2008 and 2012.; a silver medal in 2006. Currently he holds the record for quantity of gold medals and absolute first places.
All-Russian Team Olympiad in Informatics: 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2011 winner and 2008 runner-up
Topcoder High School Competition: 2010 winner, 2009 runner-up
