K League 1

Lore & Background

The South Korean professional football league was founded in 1983 as the Korean Super League, with five member clubs: Hallelujah FC, Yukong Elephants, Pohang Steelworks, Daewoo Royals, and Kookmin Bank. Hallelujah FC won the inaugural title. The league was renamed the Korean Professional Football League in 1987, then the K League in 1998. After the 2011 season, the K League Championship and Korean League Cup were abolished, and the league split into two divisions in 2013. The first division was named the K League Classic, and the second division was named the K League Challenge. On 22 January 2018, the top-flight competition was renamed as K League 1.

In Their Own Story

The floodlights at Jeonju World Cup Stadium hum to life as the away bus pulls into the parking structure. Inside the tunnel, the Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors captain checks his boots against the concrete, listening to the away end—two hundred voices at most—cut through the wall of sound from the home support. On the broadcast overlay, the league table glows: Jeonbuk top, Ulsan a point back, FC Seoul breathing down their necks. The referee's whistle splits the night air, and the first touch of the ball sends a ripple through forty thousand seats, each one a pixel-perfect render of a Korean football fan who has been here every Saturday since the World Cup. The season is long. The title is not yet decided. The game loads the next match in the queue.

Reader's Guide

The K League 1 uses a split system. Each club plays each other three times in the regular round, then the top and bottom six teams are split into Split A and Split B, in which a team plays every other team in the split once, to decide the final standings. Relegation involves the 12th team being automatically relegated, while the 10th and 11th-placed teams contest promotion-relegation play-offs against K League 2 teams. The season typically begins around March and runs to late November. The number of games, clubs, and systems have varied through the years.

Did You Know?

• The league expanded from an initial 5 to 26 clubs since its creation.
• Of the five inaugural clubs, only Yukong, Pohang, and Daewoo still compete in the K League.
• In the 2009 season, Gangwon FC joined as the 15th member club, giving the K League at least one club in each province of South Korea for the first time in domestic professional sports history.
• The K League champions, runners-up, and third-placed team gain entry to the AFC Champions League the following season, with the exception of Sangmu FC due to their unique status as a military team.