Underdog Stories / Football history

What Is the History of Pohang Steelers?

Pohang Steelers history runs from a 1973 steelworks team to three Asian titles and a last-minute derby win that gave a company club a city's voice.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · October 7, 2026

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On December 1, 2013, the ball would not leave Ulsan’s penalty area. Pohang needed a goal to win the league. Ulsan needed only to survive the final seconds. A free kick dropped among a crowd of legs, and defender Kim Won-il struck.

Pohang Steelers history began in 1973, when steelmaker POSCO formed a team beside its new works on South Korea’s east coast. The club went on to win the league five times and Asia’s top club competition three times. That goal against Ulsan was different. It gave the whole city a moment to claim, and no record book can quite capture that.

Chris Horwedel opens the Why We Love This Club episode “Pohang Steelers — The Club Forged in a Steel City” with the scramble. He first calls the scorer Kim Moon-il, then Kim Won-il later in the episode. The match record confirms Kim Won-il. It is an easy slip to make in a story where almost everything else lines up rather neatly.

When were Pohang Steelers founded?

POSCO formed its football team on April 1, 1973. It was a company side, backed by a company with a much larger job underway. POSCO had been established in 1968, and construction of its Pohang steelworks began in 1970. Roads, homes and a port were part of the effort to build a steel industry there.

On June 9, 1973, the first molten iron flowed from Pohang’s No. 1 blast furnace. The football team and the working steelworks were born in the same spring. Horwedel calls the timing “almost suspiciously perfect.” He is right. A novelist might be asked to make it less obvious.

POSCO supplied the money and structure. Horwedel said founder Park Tae-jun saw football as a way to lift morale and connect the works to the people around it. There was no tale of neighbors passing a hat around to buy a ball. The club began as a company project.

That does not settle what it became. Workers could watch with their families. Children could grow up knowing the team before they knew much about the firm that paid for it. The K League’s account of Park records how seriously he treated the sport: he backed young players long before the club had its full school-to-first-team system.

Pohang joined South Korea’s new professional league when it began in 1983. Its first league title came in 1986. Two more followed, in 1988 and 1992. By then, the team founded to represent a steelworks was giving the city reasons to follow it for its own sake.

How did the Pohang Steelers name and logo change?

The names are a short history of who the club was trying to speak for. It began as POSCO FC. The professional side became the POSCO Dolphins, then the POSCO Atoms. In the mid-1990s, Pohang Atoms put the city first. Pohang Steelers followed in 1997.

The company did not vanish when its name came off the front. POSCO remained the owner. The new name simply worked in two directions: steel was what the company made and what had shaped the city around it.

That is the useful answer to a search for Pohang Steelers logo history, too. There has been no single, unchanging mark since 1973. The badge has lived through the Dolphins, Atoms and Steelers names. Its meaning changed as the club’s public name moved from company to city. Without a full dated badge archive, it would be foolish to assign every design change a tidy year.

The shirt tells a similar story. The red-and-black horizontal stripes are now Pohang’s familiar look, though the Pohang Steelers kit history includes other colors. In 2026, the club released a special cyan-blue shirt inspired by the kits worn during its back-to-back Asian title years. The design also drew on local images, including Homigot, a coastal landmark. A club shirt can hold more than a sponsor’s name.

Why are Pohang Steelers known for youth players?

Pohang had famous players before it had the academy system it uses now. Choi Soon-ho helped define its early league-winning years. Hong Myung-bo and Hwang Sun-hong also wore the shirt. Hwang later returned as coach.

Some stars were signed. Others came through local development. Keeping those stories apart matters. A great player in a Pohang kit is not, by itself, proof that Pohang raised him.

The club did build an early route through schools. The K League records teams at Pohang Steel Middle School in 1984, the high school in 1985 and an elementary school in 1988. In 2003, school teams run by the POSCO education foundation came under the club, linking young players more closely to the professionals.

Lee Dong-gook broke through at Pohang as a teenager in the late 1990s. Hwang Hee-chan played in its youth system before leaving for Red Bull Salzburg. Both careers show the appeal of that route. They also show its limit: teaching a player well does not mean keeping him forever.

“The institution began from above. The meaning accumulated from below.”
— Chris Horwedel, on Why We Love This Club

Horwedel makes that point without pretending the club can hold on to everyone. He describes development as a source of pride with an exit door attached. Nor does Pohang’s youth record mean it has always played without foreign stars. Its 2009 Asian champions included Brazilian forward Denílson. The club’s strength was having a system players could join, rather than asking one signing to be the whole plan.

What makes Pohang Steel Yard important?

Steel Yard was completed in November 1990. It was South Korea’s first stadium built specifically for football. That sounds ordinary now. At the time, supporters were used to grounds with running tracks between their seats and the pitch.

There is no track at Steel Yard. The K League puts the distance from stand to field at about six meters. The stands rise close enough for a poor first touch to become everybody’s business. Horwedel describes a ground that feels bigger than its size because the crowd is right there with the players.

The stadium also gives the club a place that could belong only to Pohang. Its name needs little explanation in a steel city. Park Tae-jun visited for a match in 2011, when the K League says more than 16,000 supporters greeted him. By then, people who had not built the ground or the company had filled it with their own match-day habits.

Age brought a less charming detail. During an August 8, 2026 match against Ulsan, concrete fell from a spectator-area ceiling and injured a fan’s hand. The league barred matches there while the ground was checked and repaired. Pohang returned to Steel Yard in October after safety work. The incident belongs in its history as plainly as the opening date does. People have to be safe when they come through the gates.

How did Pohang Steelers win three Asian titles?

Pohang’s first Asian Club Championship ended with a 2–1 extra-time win over fellow Korean side Ilhwa Chunma in 1997. It retained the trophy in 1998. The final against China’s Dalian Wanda stayed scoreless through extra time, so Pohang won it on penalties.

The third title took another eleven years. Under Brazilian coach Sérgio Farias, Pohang won the Korean league in 2007, then reached the 2009 AFC Champions League quarterfinals against Bunyodkor of Uzbekistan. A 3–1 away defeat left plenty to do at Steel Yard.

Bunyodkor had Rivaldo playing and Luiz Felipe Scolari coaching. Pohang won the return leg 4–1 after extra time and advanced 5–4 overall. In Tokyo’s final, it beat Saudi Arabia’s Al-Ittihad 2–1. Pohang became the first club to win Asia’s leading club competition three times.

That team was hardly an all-local fairy tale. Farias was Brazilian, as was Denílson. The club then finished third at the 2009 FIFA Club World Cup. Pohang’s 1997, 1998 and 2009 trophies came from different squads in different eras, which is more impressive than forcing them into one simple tale.

A fourth Asian title remains out of reach. Pohang got past Ulsan on penalties in the 2021 Champions League semifinal after Alex Grant’s late equalizer. Al-Hilal beat Pohang 2–0 in the final. Even the route to a lost final had gone through the neighbor it most wanted to beat.

Why does the 2013 East Coast Derby matter so much?

Pohang and Ulsan are nearby industrial cities with company-backed clubs. Their meetings are called the East Coast Derby. On December 1, 2013, Ulsan entered their final league match two points ahead. A draw at home would make them champions.

Pohang had already won the Korean FA Cup that season, beating Jeonbuk on penalties. No foreign players featured in Hwang Sun-hong’s squad, an unusual sight for the club. To add the league title, they had to win at Ulsan.

Still 0–0. Deep into stoppage time, Kim Won-il finished a free kick in the 95th minute, giving Pohang a 1–0 win and the first league-and-cup double in Korean professional football. Ulsan had been close enough to the title to start counting the seconds.

Horwedel says of the club, “The institution began from above. The meaning accumulated from below.” The derby goal makes his point better than a company slogan could. POSCO founded the team. It could not have arranged for Kim Won-il to find that loose ball.

The rivalry kept producing its own footnotes. Pohang knocked Ulsan out of Asia in 2021. In the 2024 Korea Cup final, Pohang came from behind to beat Ulsan 3–1 after extra time and claim a sixth cup title. Kim In-sung scored the winner that day. For a club with three Asian crowns, a goal against the neighbor can still be the one people want to talk about on the way home.

The full episode of Why We Love This Club is on Underdog Podcasts, with the rest of the network's shows.