K-Football Innovation Committee Expands FA Presidential Electoral College to Over 10,000

The electoral college for the next president of the Korea Football Association (KFA) will be significantly expanded from the previous limit of under 300 to more than 10,000.

The K-Football Innovation Committee held its 4th meeting this morning at the conference room of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, presided over by Co-Chairperson Park Ji-sung, where members reached a consensus to expand the electoral college to a scale of 10,000.

The meeting was held behind closed doors for about two hours with all committee members in attendance, including Korean Sport & Olympic Committee President Yoo Seung-min. Immediately afterward, Chairperson Park personally conducted a briefing to announce the decision.

"Based on the Korean Sport & Olympic Committee's electoral college reform proposal, we are discussing ways to adjust it to fit the KFA's actual conditions by adding members from professional, semi-professional, university, and tiered league systems," Park said. "We expect that the size of the electoral college to be recommended will be 10,000 or more."

He added, "We have decided to finalize the procedures for amending the Korean Sport & Olympic Committee's member sports organization regulations, which serve as the basis for the reform proposal, by August."

Currently, the Korean Sport & Olympic Committee's member sports organization regulations are based on an indirect election system that limits the presidential electoral college to "within 300 people."

Consequently, electoral colleges have previously been formed using only a severely limited number of individuals, including officials from city and provincial football associations and national federations, select coaches, players, and referees.

To secure representativeness and fairness in the election, the committee plans to broadly reflect the voices of numerous football stakeholders sustaining the field—ranging from professional and semi-professional to university and lower-tier league participants.

"Since it is realistically difficult to include everyone in the electoral college, we are currently discussing the extent of inclusion," Park noted. "As the scale will increase significantly compared to the past, the proportion of active field participants such as players and coaches will inevitably increase a lot."

He also explained, "Regarding the voting method, we are considering introducing various options such as electronic voting. However, due to budget issues and other factors, we need to discuss further to determine the most reasonable approach."

Meanwhile, it was reported that the committee did not keep detailed meeting minutes specifying individual speakers during its first three meetings, drawing criticism from some quarters that it was repeating "behind-closed-doors administration."

In response, Park explained, "We are replacing them with press briefings led directly by me as chairperson. While we leave documentation summarizing the discussions on major agenda items, we do not include specific details on which member made which remarks."

"If meeting minutes containing specific remarks are released to the media, there is potential to exacerbate situations," he stated, adding, "I think there is also an aspect of protecting the association in that regard."

(Photo: Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.