Hong Myung-bo, head coach of the South Korean men's national football team, prepares for a media scrum at Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, on July 15, 2024, before traveling to Europe to interview candidates for his assistant coaching positions. (Yonhap)
The sports ministry said Friday it has launched an investigation into the national football governing body over possible irregularities during its recent hiring of the new men's national team head coach.
An official with the ministry said the audit on the Korea Football Association (KFA) essentially began Thursday when Jang Mi-ran, the second vice minister, broached the subject during her media availability.
After meeting Choo Kyung-ho, floor leader of the ruling People Power Party, at the National Assembly on Thursday to discuss the KFA situation, Jang told reporters, "A lot of people wonder if the KFA is being run properly. We will try to answer people's questions through an audit."
Since poaching Hong Myung-bo from his K League club Ulsan HD FC and naming him as the new head coach of the men's national team on July 7, the KFA has faced criticism from fans and former players alike for its lack of transparency.
The governing body had spent the past five months searching for a replacement for Jurgen Klinsmann, who was fired in February. The KFA had interviewed several foreign candidates and even came close to signing one in May.
Only days before naming Hong as the coach, Lee Lim-saeng, technical director of the KFA overseeing the selection process, had traveled to Europe to interview two former Premier League coaches, Gus Poyet and David Wagner.
While their interviews each went on for hours, the KFA decided on Hong after a brief meeting between him and Lee on July 5.
Just hours before that meeting, Hong had told reporters he wasn't planning on seeing any KFA officials and assured Ulsan fans that he wasn't going to leave the club midseason to take the national team job.
The KFA has yet to offer any plausible explanation as to why it suddenly changed course and hired a Korean tactician after spending months reviewing candidacies of foreign coaches, and critics argue that the KFA disregarded its own vetting process to bring in a coach to the liking of its chief, Chung Mong-gyu.
Soon after Hong's appointment, former national team midfielder Park Joo-ho then released a YouTube video detailing his involvement in the hiring process as a member of the KFA's National Teams Committee. Park charged that the KFA wasted five months of his time because it already had Hong in mind as the head coach and only went through interviews with other candidates just for show.
The sports ministry has begun reviewing documents, but it has not been determined when ministry officials will conduct an on-site audit at the KFA's headquarters in Seoul.
"Since hiring the national team head coach is part of the KFA's operations, we will look and see if the work was done in accordance with the KFA's own set of rules. We are not probing the coach himself," a ministry official said. "We will also see if the KFA's budget has been executed in a transparent and fair manner."
The ministry had completed a preliminary investigation into the case before deciding to launch a full audit.
The KFA is listed as "a government-related organization" and thus is subject to an audit by the sports ministry.
An official with the KFA said the association will fully cooperate with the ministry, though as of early Friday evening, it had not been contacted by the ministry.
The KFA first balked at the ministry's intent to conduct an audit, citing articles in the FIFA Statutes that mandate operational independence for member organizations.
According to Article 14 in the FIFA Statutes, members associations are under obligation to "manage their affairs independently and ensure that their own affairs are not influenced by any third parties."
Article 19 states: "Each member association shall manage its affairs independently and without undue influence from third parties."
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