By Kang Seung-woo
Staff Reporter
The possibility has risen that Seoul may have another K-League team.
``I hope another Seoul-based club will emerge during my term,'' the Korea Football Association (KFA) president Chung Mong-joon was quoted as saying by the Sports Seoul, a Korean sports daily, Monday.
Now, Seoul has one pro team, FC Seoul.
However, his project is not founding a new team but bringing one team into the National League, which is an amateur league, (N-League) to the K-League.
Last year, the rule that the N-League winner will be promoted to the K-League was adopted but last season's champion Goyang KB rejected the promotion due to internal problems.
In the first half of the N-League this year, Hyundai Mipo Dolphin won the league.
What's brightening the future is that the team is a subsidiary company of the Hyundai Heavy Industries whose largest stock holder is Chung.
The club is considered the only team in the N-League to be able to afford to advance.
``It will be trouble if Ulsan has two pro football teams. Assuming the promotion of the Dolphins, either of them can change its franchise,'' one league clerk said to the paper.
The other team based in the city is two-time league champion Ulsan Tigers.
Initially, the Tigers were expected to transfer to Seoul but concerned about fans' disapproval, they allegedly have reached a conclusion to move the N-League team to Seoul.
``Mipo Dolphin has already undertaken jobs for the transfer. KFA clerks now working on the U-17 World Cup will be dispatched to the team to establish the K-League-caliber front office,'' a person familiar with Hyundai Mipo Dockyard, the parent company of the football team, said.
Meanwhile, the K-League expressed a positive response to the second Seoul-based team.
The league manifests that it will allow only a newly founded team to use Seoul as its base.
``In constructing the Seoul World Cup Stadium, two teams were supposed to use it. If a team meets the K-League's requirements, it is possible to move to Seoul,'' an officer of the league said in a media interview.
According to the K-League, ahead of the stadium construction, football communities promised to invest 25 billion won ($26 million), and two Seoul-based teams were required to pay 15 billion won.
As a result, FC Seoul paid the half of the amount in 2005 when it moved to Seoul from Anyang and the other team needs to pay the rest of it.