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| dalpaengi | Feb 18 2009, 02:32 PM |
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This may end up being rather long-winded as I have a tendency to ramble on a bit too much when I really should be much more succinct and to the point, but I'll try and put the whole Bucheon situation into context so AFC Wimbledon fans can get a better idea of what went on. Back in the early 1980s, when South Korea was beginning to rapidly develop as a country, it was decided by the powers-that-be that the general population would quite like to have a few professional sports leagues to enjoy. They created a baseball league in 1982 and pencilled in the creation of a football league for 1983. As the leagues were developing in such a fashion, it required investment from major corporations to actually get the teams off the ground, and the very first season of the Korean league began with five teams - Daewoo (the car manufacturer), POSCO (the national steel company), Kookmin Bank (a bank, obviously), Hallelujah (churchy-types) and Yukong Elephants (Yukong were a whopping great corporation involved in doing absolutely everything). The last club there is the important one for this  As it was essentially a giant circus designed as entertainment for the general population, the league toured around the country each weekend and games were played in different cities - Seoul one weekend for two rounds of fixtures, then off to Suwon the following week for some more, Daejeon next, etc. That went on for a fair few years and a number of other corporations, notably LG and Hyundai, got in on the fun of operating teams in the league. By the late 1980s the teams had found a few home cities or areas to be based in for training purposes and the like, but the league still continued to tour the country more often than not. Yukong's team base was in the city of Incheon on the west coast of Korea and very close to Seoul. In 1990 POSCO completed construction of the first football-specific stadium in the country right in the heart of their giant steelworks in the city of Pohang, and gradually the other teams started to play the majority of their home games out of one city. Daewoo Royals became associated with Busan, Hyundai Horang-i with Ulsan, and three teams decided to call Seoul home. Those three were LG Cheetahs, Ilhwa Chunma (owned by the Moonies) and Yukong Elephants who were all playing at Seoul's Dongdaemun Stadium, then the home of the national team. League membership had settled at six clubs by the early 1990s, but in 1994 a new team called Chonbuk Buffalo joined the league. Although they were corporately-funded, they were the first team to adopt a geographical location in their team name, named after North Jeolla province - an English equivalent would be a team called West Midlands United or Yorkshire and the Humber Rovers. Buffalo lasted just one season before folding, but they were replaced in 1995 by two new teams: Chonbuk Hyundai Motors, a replacement side from the same region funded by Hyundai, and Chunnam Dragons, named after and based in South Jeolla province. Samsung were also keen on getting their own football team off the ground, and they spent 1995 setting things up. They took a different approach by specifically stating they would create their team in the city of Suwon and began forging local links right from the outset before Suwon Samsung Bluewings were to begin competing in 1996. The K-League liked the sound of this whole localisation malarkey, and decided that all the K-League clubs should adopt local identities in their team names and forge stronger links with the communities where they were based before the 1996 season started. The Japanese had done this from the beginning of the J-League in 1993, even going so far as to ban corporations from using their corporate IDs in team names. They then, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the Seoul-based teams would have far too much of an unfair advantage over teams based elsewhere in the country owing to the population of the capital, and that the three teams in the city would have to relocate with immediate effect. LG decided to move their team the short distance down to Anyang to become Anyang LG Cheetahs, the Moonies shunted their team a wee bit further afield to Cheonan to become Cheonan Ilhwa Chunma and Yukong decided to relocate to Bucheon, just to the west of the capital, and become Bucheon Yukong. The one teeny tiny problem with that though was that there was no stadium in the city of Bucheon in 1996, so they were able to continue playing in the capital at Mok-dong stadium in west Seoul until one was built. So that takes us from the birth of Yukong Elephants in 1983 through to their forced move out of the capital by the K-League in 1996. |
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| A brief history of SK Football Club · History | |
2:10 PM Nov 30
