Three more candidates register on deadline to run for top football post

Three more candidates, including two front-runners, registered themselves in the election for the country’s top football job on Monday, the deadline to officially enter the race.

The Korea Football Association, the South Korean governing body of football, said the KFA chairman election, set for Jan. 28, will have four candidates in total.

Chung Mong-gyu, the former commissioner of the K League, the governing body of professional football, registered his candidacy Monday, along with Heo Seung-pyo, a former KFA vice chairman, and Yoon Sang-hyun, a two-term lawmaker for the ruling Saenuri Party.

Kim Seok-han, the former head of the Korea Middle School Football Association, became the first to register as a candidate last Wednesday.

Ahn Jong-box, a former KFA executive who’d earlier declared his intention to run, dropped out of the race on Sunday.

The incumbent KFA chairman, Cho Chung-yun, has decided against a second term, and the KFA will elect his successor on Jan. 28, with 24 KFA delegates ― 16 heads of municipal and provincial football governing bodies and eight heads of KFA-affiliated football federations ― casting votes.

Under the KFA rules, candidates were required to submit letters of recommendation from at least three delegates to enter the election.

Chung Mong-gyu is considered the favorite. He recently left his K League post, with one year left on his term, to run for the KFA position. The K League commissioner is one of the 24 delegates voting in the KFA election.

Chung is a cousin of Chung Mong-joon, a former KFA chairman and an ex-FIFA vice president, and also one of the most powerful figures in South Korean football.

Heo Seung-pyo, currently a business executive, may present the biggest challenge to Chung Mong-gyu. Heo has come up short in two earlier KFA elections, losing to Chung Mong-joon in 1997 and to Cho Chung-yun in 2009.

The KFA is the largest sport governing body in South Korea. Its annual budget is typically around 100 billion won ($94.7 million), and its sponsors include some of the country’s largest corporations, such as Samsung Electronics, KT and Hyundai Motor. It affords the KFA a degree of financial and administrative independence uncommon for a South Korean sport governing organization. (Yonhap News)