The K League decentralization policy in 1995 was a policy of moving

K League K League () is South Korea's professional football league. It includes the first division K League 1 and the second division K League 2. Clubs competing in the K League have won a record total of twelve AFC Champions League Elite, AFC Champions ...

clubs located in

Seoul Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital city, capital and largest city of South Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's List of cities b ...

to other regions. It was an effort by the

Government of South Korea The government of South Korea () is the national government of the Republic of Korea, created by the Constitution of South Korea as the executive, legislative and judicial authority of the republic. The president acts as the head of state and ...

and the K League Federation to increase popularity of football nationwide before the

2002 FIFA World Cup The 2002 FIFA World Cup, also branded as Korea/Japan 2002, was the 17th FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial Association football, football world championship for List of men's national association football teams, men's national teams organized by ...

for which they bid. In accordance with it, the three K League clubs, Yukong Elephants,

Ilhwa Chunma Seongnam Football Club () is a South Korean professional football (soccer), football club based in Seongnam that competes in the K League 2, the second tier of South Korean football. It is one of the most successful clubs in South Korea and the ...

and

LG Cheetahs FC Seoul () is a South Korean professional football club based in Seoul that competes in the K League 1, the top flight of South Korean football. The club is owned by GS Sports, a subsidiary of GS Group. Since 2004, FC Seoul have played its hom ...

, moved from Seoul to

Bucheon Bucheon (; ) is a city in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. Bucheon is located away from Seoul, of which it is a satellite city. It is located between Incheon and Seoul. Bucheon is the second most densely populated city in South Korea after Seo ...

Cheonan Cheonan (; ) is the largest and most densely populated city of South Chungcheong Province, South Korea, and the third largest city in the Hoseo region after Daejeon and Cheongju. Cheonan borders Gyeonggi Province ( Pyeongtaek and Anseong) i ...

and

Anyang Anyang ( zh, s=安阳, t=安陽; ) is a prefecture-level city in Henan, China. Geographical coordinates are 35° 41'~ 36° 21' north latitude and 113° 38'~ 114° 59' east longitude. The northernmost city in Henan, Anyang borders Puyang to the eas ...

, respectively, in 1996.

Overview

By 1995, there had been three professional football clubs based in Seoul:

and Yukong Elephants.

Federation wanted to spread football popularity nationally and secure football-specific stadiums for bidding of

. In order to achieve this goal, K League and

Blue House Cheong Wa Dae (), also known as the Blue House in English, is a public park that was the former Office of the President of South Korea, executive office and residence of the president of South Korea. Located in Seoul's Jongno District, directl ...

forced all three clubs in Seoul to move to other cities. The intention was to compensate for the decreased number of home cities under the new system. This policy was not proceeded smoothly with the clubs affected by it, and brought resistances from them. K League Federation announced that if the clubs don't accept the decision, they will be excluded from the league. The federation also decided that one club among them could get the priority to return to Seoul, if it would build a

football-specific stadium A soccer-specific stadium, mainly in the United States and Canada, is a sports stadium either purpose-built or fundamentally redesigned for soccer and whose primary function is to host soccer matches, as opposed to a multi-purpose stadium whic ...

in Seoul. Then all three clubs agreed to move. Once the plan was announced, many city governments hoped to attract these clubs.

Details

Yukong Elephants

At first, Yukong Elephants threatened K League that they would dissolve the club if they have to move out of Seoul. However, they took

's offer to give a new 20,000-seater

Bucheon Stadium Bucheon Stadium () is a multi-purpose stadium in Bucheon, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea. It is currently used mostly for association football, football matches and has been the home stadium of Bucheon FC 1995 since 2008. The stadium has a seating cap ...

and another football-specific stadium including two training fields. They decided to use Seoul Mokdong Stadium as their temporary home ground until the construction of Bucheon Stadium to be completed. They changed their name to ''Bucheon Yukong'' as a part of the policy on 4 January 1996.

Ilhwa Chunma

promised

that they would change the

Cheonan Oryong Stadium Cheonan Oryong Stadium (Oryong Civic Stadium) was a multi-use stadium in Cheonan, South Korea. It was used mostly for football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball) ...

into a football-specific stadium by paying ₩1.2 billion and would build another sports complex. Ilhwa accepted the offer, moved to Cheonan, and changed its name to ''Cheonan Ilhwa Chunma'' as a part of the policy on 29 March 1996.

LG Cheetahs

was regarding to move to

Changwon Changwon (; ) is the capital and largest city of South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea (with a population of 1,025,702 ), and the 11th largest city of the South Korea, country. A port city, Changwon is bordered by Masan Bay to the south, and the ...

as well, but decided to move to

due to the popularity of football in the region and the local characteristics. They changed their name to ''Anyang LG Cheetahs'' as a part of the policy on 26 April 1996.

Aftermath

K League started perfect "home and away system" from 1996 after all clubs got their own stadiums as a result. After the 2002 FIFA World Cup,

Korea Football Association The Korea Football Association () is the governing body of football and futsal within South Korea. It sanctions professional, semi-professional and amateur football in South Korea. Founded in 1933, the governing body became affiliated with ...

needed to pay

Seoul Metropolitan Government The Seoul Metropolitan Government () is a local government of Seoul, South Korea. The mayor is elected to a four-year term by the citizens of Seoul and is responsible for the administration of the city government. The Seoul Metropolitan Governmen ...

₩25 billion as their share of the construction of

Seoul World Cup Stadium The Seoul World Cup Stadium (), the Sangam Stadium, is a stadium used mostly for association football matches. The venue is located in 240, World Cup-ro, Mapo-gu, Seoul, South Korea. It was built for the 2002 FIFA World Cup and opened on Nov ...

. KFA wanted to find a new club in Seoul and let the club to pay the whole share, but it didn't happen. Seoul Metropolitan Government understood that potential investment on a new Seoul club had not made due to the amount of the share, they agreed to cut ₩10 billion in the way of sponsoring the new team with the same amount of money. Also, KFA agreed to pay ₩10 billion of their share to reduce the burden to a new Seoul club, leaving only ₩5 billion to pay. In the meantime, Anyang LG Cheetahs declared their interest in moving to Seoul and Seoul Metropolitan Government welcomed it, though KFA prioritized the foundation of a new club. But many candidate companies (including

KT Corporation KT Corporation (Hangul: 주식회사 케이티), formerly Korea Telecom, is a South Korean telecommunications company, mobile network operator (MNO) and List of mobile virtual network operators in South Korea, mobile virtual network operator (M ...

and

Kumho Asiana Group Kumho Asiana Group is a large South Korean ''Chaebol'' (conglomerate), with subsidiaries in the construction, electronics, information technology, IT, leisure, logistics, manufacturing, tourism and transportation sectors. The group is headquarte ...

), which received proposal from KFA and K League, refused to found a new Seoul-based club. On 6 February 2004, K League Federation officially allowed the existing K League club's move to Seoul and sent relocation proposal to all K League clubs. KFA declared that if an existing club wants to move to Seoul, they need to pay ₩15 billion, due to the KFA's ₩10 billion offer was only under the condition of foundation of a new club. A few days later, however, KFA cut the share to pay to a half, ₩7.5 billion, with a prospect of a new Seoul club in future to pay the other half.

Busan I'Cons Busan IPark FC () is a South Korean professional football club based in Busan that competes in K League 2, the second tier of the South Korean football pyramid. They play their home games at the Busan Gudeok Stadium. Busan IPark was founded as ...

also had declared their interest in being a new Seoul club, but later retreated their interest. Anyang LG Cheetahs finally returned to Seoul on 10 March 2004.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Decentralization Policy In K League K League Football in Seoul Sport in Seoul Seongnam FC FC Seoul Jeju SK FC