Matchday 6 of the anniversary season was like a dream with people for South Korea’s football professionals. 45,000 attended Seoul FC’s home K-League game against Daegu FC at the capital’s World Cup stadium. The number was almost more newsworthy than Seoul’s 3-0 win and loaned Nottingham Forest’s Hwang Ui-jo’s first goal. The media called it “historic” because it was the first time in South Korea that so many people had come together somewhere since the outbreak of the corona pandemic. And then there’s league football, which is usually not well attended.
However, there was a suspicion that the majority in the stands had not come because of the game, but because of the half-time break. It featured Lim Young-woong, a highly popular schlager and K-pop singer.
The K-League, East Asia’s oldest professional soccer league, turns 40 this year, and as always with such anniversaries, there’s a lot to talk about. From before, from now, from the struggle for what is to come later. Football gets an appearance that points beyond the game with its goal chasing and defensive battles. For once in the history of the K-League, he is not an undisputed magnet for spectators – but the artificial product of a homeland where people are mainly into baseball and pop greats like the aforementioned Lim Young-woong. “Football is not as rooted in the lifestyle here as it is in Germany, for example,” says Han Oung-soo, vice-president of the league. The K-League has changed little since it started its first season in June 1983 with five teams.
There is a theory that the president at the time did not make people more obedient – but fueled their desire for freedom
Han Oung-soo sits in a conference room at League headquarters in Seoul’s Jongno district. He is a proud, thoughtful Korean, born in 1956. He calls the 40 years of the K-League “a great achievement”. For him, it fits in with the “Miracle on the Han River,” with South Korea’s rapid rise from a destitute post-war country to the tenth largest economy in the world. He knows how poor the metropolis looked in the decade after the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. And of course he remembers the circumstances of the first season. “We were still a developing country back then.” And one in which democracy had not yet arrived despite wild student protests.
South Korea’s authoritarian President Chun Doo-hwan was one of the drivers behind the K-League. Here in 1981 during a visit to US President Ronald Reagan in Washington, DC
(Photo: Keystone/Zuma/Imago)
The authoritarian President Chun Doo-hwan, once a footballer himself, had the idea at the time to distract people from the harshness of his politics with more fun. He extended curfew hours, relaxed censorship for revealing films – and promoted professional sport. The baseball league KBO was founded in 1982, followed a year later by the football league, an initiative of the football association KFA. In 1986 the Asian Games and in 1988 the Olympic Games would come to Seoul.
There is a theory that Chun’s entertainment strategy didn’t make people more obedient. But that it gave them a real desire for freedom. As such, the K-League founders indirectly contributed to the grassroots movements that forced direct presidential elections in 1987 and the beginning of South Korea’s democracy today. The football officials from the very beginning were actually busy expanding the young championship and gaining attention.
Today the K-League comprises 25 teams, twelve play in the first division and 13 in the second division. The first champion, the church club Hallelujah FC, founded in 1980 by the then KFA President Choi Soon-young, is no longer among them. Only corporate clubs like the three founding members POSCO Dolphins, Yukong Elephants and Daewoo Royals were able to survive. They are still part of the Korean professional football establishment. They’re just called differently now, which also has to do with the realization that local fans don’t identify so well with company names. While still owned by steel company POSCO, the Dolphins are now the Pohang Steelers. The Yukong Elephants of the conglomerate SK Group no longer play in the greater Seoul area, but as Jeju United in the former World Cup stadium on the island of Jeju. And after the change of ownership at the turn of the millennium, the Daewoo Royals became the second division club Busan IPark.
The average attendance in the K-League is 8,100 per game – 20,000 to 30,000 is the goal
The field of company teams with champion Ulsan Hyundai is now supplemented by clubs such as Daegu FC or Incheon United, which belong to the administrations of their respective locations. There are no independent football brands. The German football romanticism, according to which a real successful club should have grown from the depths of the club culture, does not work in the tiger state because there is no real club culture. Soccer is a grants business in South Korea. Nothing works without a strong owner. The K-League also thinks it’s not ideal. “Increasing sustainability is one of the key tasks for us today,” says Vice President Han. “We need more viewers, then we can talk about better television and sponsorship deals.” The K-League average attendance is 8,100 per game. The goal is 20,000 to 30,000.
But the K-League was progress. Since the professional league came into being, the national team hasn’t missed a World Cup. The squad that finished fourth at the 2002 home World Cup and sparked a new enthusiasm for football was made up mostly of K-League players. There are now more legionnaires, but the new German national coach Jürgen Klinsmann will also need the player pool of the K-League.
There has been a youth concept since 2008, according to which each club must have at least three youth teams; one for elementary school students (ages six to 12), one for middle school students (13 to 15), one for high school students (15 to 18). “About 40 percent of the 800 Korean K-League players come from this youth system,” says Han. According to the K-League, there are around 100,000 footballers in South Korea.
Thumbs up: Jürgen Klinsmann (left) is now the national coach of South Korea.
(Photo: Gary A. Vasquez/USA TODAY Network/Imago)
According to membership statistics, the German Football Association has 2.2 million active members. Nevertheless, the Germans lost 2-0 to South Korea in the 2018 World Cup preliminary round in Russia, against an eleven with many K-League professionals. In globalized football, it’s not just about size, but above all about who is doing what with their resources at certain moments. In any case, Vice President Han Oung-soo doesn’t want to be misunderstood when he talks about the number of viewers that can be increased and the lack of sustainability. He stands by the K-League, of course.
Han had little to do with football when he joined the KFA in 1982. He worked at the insurance company run by the head of the KFA, Choi, and was transferred to the association’s administration. A year and a half later, Han moved to the new electronics group club Lucky-Goldstar FC, now FC Seoul. The passion came with time. It grew when South Korea won the 2002 World Cup with Japan. And today, Han Oung-soo is a veteran official who represents the K-League with conviction as what it still is 40 years later, with its club creations and rebranded corporate teams: an authentic construct of South Korean commercial society.