Underdog Stories / Football history

What Is the History of Pohang Steelers?

Pohang Steelers history runs from a 1973 steelworks team to five Korean league titles and three Asian crowns, with a 95th-minute derby goal at its heart.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · October 7, 2026

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On December 1, 2013, Pohang Steelers sent a free kick into a crowded Ulsan penalty area. The clock had reached the 95th minute. Defender Kim Won-il found the loose ball, scored, and took the Korean league title from Pohang’s oldest rival.

That goal is the sharpest scene in Pohang Steelers history. POSCO founded the club in 1973 beside its new steelworks, and the company still owns it. In between came five league titles, three Asian crowns, a youth system built around local schools, and a football ground close enough to make a poor first touch feel public.

Chris Horwedel opens the Why We Love This Club episode “Pohang Steelers — The Club Forged in a Steel City” with the Ulsan goal. Listen to his account and you can hear why it stuck. Pohang had needed a win; Ulsan needed only a draw. For nearly the whole match, the draw held.

Pohang Steelers history: How did a steel company start the club?

POSCO was established in 1968, when South Korea was building an industry it badly needed. Its Pohang works demanded a port and a workforce. On April 1, 1973, the company founded a semi-professional football side called POSCO FC. The first molten iron flowed from Pohang’s No. 1 blast furnace on June 9.

The dates are almost too neat. There were 69 days between the club’s founding and the furnace’s first pour. Neither project sprang from a group of fans meeting in a pub. POSCO supplied the team’s money and organization.

Horwedel puts the awkward part plainly: “The institution began from above. The meaning accumulated from below.” A company can found a team. It cannot order a child to care about one, or make a family keep the same match-day habit for decades.

The names show how that happened. The side entered Korea’s new professional league in 1983 and turned fully professional in 1984 as the POSCO Dolphins. It became the POSCO Atoms, then the Pohang Atoms in 1995. The Pohang Steelers name arrived in 1997. POSCO remained the owner, but the city had moved to the front of the shirt.

Success helped. Pohang won league titles in 1986 and 1988, then another in 1992. Forward Choi Soon-ho gave those early sides a star worth watching. The club had already become far more than a way for POSCO to field eleven employees.

How did Pohang build its youth academy?

Pohang’s youth system began before “academy” became a label every club wanted. It started early. In 1980, POSCO founder Park Tae-jun arranged support for school football teams, and football sides were later formed at Pohang steel schools for younger players. In 2003, those school teams came under the club, linking the age groups to the professional side.

That is a long time to wait for a system to mature. It is also why the 2013 team did not appear from nowhere.

Lee Dong-gook came through Pohang as a teenage striker. Lee Myung-ju was another product of the club’s school route and played in the 2013 title side. Hwang Hee-chan developed in that system too, though he left for Salzburg rather than becoming a long-serving Pohang first-team player.

There is a cost to doing this well: talented players can leave. Horwedel notes that an academy gives a club pride and transfer value, along with an exit door. His point is sharper than a claim that Pohang only wins with homegrown players. Its 2009 Asian champions had important foreign players. In 2013, coach Hwang Sun-hong won the league and cup with an all-Korean squad. The methods changed with the players available.

Why is Pohang Steel Yard important?

Steel Yard was completed in November 1990. It was South Korea’s first football-specific stadium, built when running tracks commonly kept crowds away from the pitch. K League has listed its capacity at 15,521. That is a small ground by the standards of a club with three Asian titles.

Small works here. The stands rise close to the field, so a crowd does not need to fill a huge bowl to be heard. “No one has ever traveled to Steelyard and wondered how the club got its nickname,” Horwedel says. The nearby works settle that question before anyone reaches a seat.

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

The ground also gave Pohang a fixed address. Players could leave, and club names could change. Families could still return to the same place for the next match. In 2018, a shirt design carried a silhouette of Steel Yard, Pohang and the POSCO works along its hem. Someone had to think a stadium belonged on a shirt.

Age brought a less charming detail. During an August 2026 match against Ulsan, falling concrete injured a spectator. The league stopped matches at Steel Yard while the club carried out safety checks and repairs. Pohang announced in October that the ground had passed final inspections and would reopen for home games. Loving an old stadium includes fixing it.

What is Pohang Steelers kit and logo history?

The familiar shirt has red-and-black horizontal stripes. Those colors became Pohang’s regular look in 1984, though the club has made room for others. From the second half of 1996 through 1998, its home kit was cyan blue. Those were also the years of its back-to-back Asian Club Championship wins.

Pohang brought that blue back in a limited retro kit in 2017. A year later, its home shirt borrowed the stripe order from designs worn from 1985 to 1992, a precise nod to the seasons people remembered. The bands were in the right order.

The first POSCO FC shirt was orange, a nod to hot metal. For its 50th anniversary in 2023, Pohang issued an orange special kit. Its badge took inspiration from the founding-era emblem rather than simply putting a birthday number on the usual crest.

The club also released anniversary artwork that year. It included Steel Yard and the steelworks, as you might expect. It found room for Pohang’s bridge and local dried fish, too. The badge and the shirt can tell the corporate story; the odd little details tell you people actually live there.

How did Pohang Steelers win three Asian titles?

Pohang first became Asian champions in the 1996–97 Asian Club Championship. It beat fellow Korean side Ilhwa Chunma 2–1 after extra time. In 1997–98, Pohang retained the title against China’s Dalian Wanda. The scoreless final went to penalties. Those wins belonged to an era when Pohang also had Hwang Sun-hong up front.

The third title came in a different competition and from a different kind of team. Brazilian coach Sérgio Farias had led Pohang to its fourth Korean league title in 2007. In the 2009 AFC Champions League, his side lost the quarterfinal first leg 3–1 to Uzbekistan’s Bunyodkor. It won the return 4–1 after extra time.

Pohang went to Tokyo for the final. It beat Saudi Arabia’s Al Ittihad 2–1. No Byung-jun and Kim Hyung-il scored. The Steelers then finished third at the FIFA Club World Cup.

That 2009 side belongs beside the 2013 one. Foreign forwards Denílson and Stevica Ristić mattered to the Asian run. Four years later, a squad without foreign players won Korea’s first professional league-and-cup double, and Pohang’s record is stronger with both teams in it. Two very different sides.

Why does the 2013 East Coast Derby still matter?

Pohang and Ulsan sit on South Korea’s industrial east coast. Their rivalry is called the East Coast Derby, and both clubs have long had powerful company backers. On the last day of the 2013 season, that local contest carried the league title as well.

Pohang arrived two points behind Ulsan. A draw would leave Ulsan champions. Kim Won-il’s goal from the late free kick made it 1–0. Pohang finished on 74 points, one ahead of its rival, and added the league title to the FA Cup it had won in October.

The rivalry kept producing hard-to-forget meetings. In the 2021 Asian Champions League semifinal, Pohang came from behind against Ulsan and advanced on penalties. Al Hilal beat Pohang 2–0 in the final. A fourth Asian title stayed out of reach.

Pohang won the Korean cup in 2023. It kept it in 2024 by beating Ulsan 3–1 after extra time. That brought the club’s cup total to six. Another trophy had to come through the neighbors. By then, anyone in a red-and-black shirt knew the route.

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