Professional league football was seen as the backbone of the game in Europe and many other football-playing countries around the world. The main European leagues, in Italy, Spain, England and West Germany, were places that the world's best footballers aspired to play in order to keep themselves on the top of their game. These countries had up to a century of league football tradition and it is little wonder those same nations were at the top of the international football tree. The KFA, casting envious glances towards Europe, and with one eye on the forthcoming 1986 World Cup qualifiers and 1988 Olympic Games hosting, began the process of setting up a professional league within Korea.
The Korean Professional Football League, now more popularly known as the K-League, was established in 1983. The decision was made to operate the league with the same format as the popular European leagues, with each club playing a set number of home and away matches, picking up two points for a win and one point for a draw. Only five clubs were selected to participate in the first league competition, so it was decided that the teams would play each other four times, a total of sixteen matches over the course of the season.
Two professional sides were chosen to take part in the initial competition – Hallelujah FC, a Christian missionary club, and Yukong Elephants. Three amateur company sides were also involved – Daewoo, POSCO and Kookmin Bank. The latter had been reasonably successful in the amateur competitions, having won the 33rd amateur Football Conference in 1978. They were also the holders of the President's Cup, a tournament they won in early 1983. The previous year they had lost in the final of the same competition to Korea University so their pedigree was well established. POSCO themselves, founded in 1973, had won the 22nd President's Cup in 1974 and finished runners-up in the 1977 amateur Football Conference.
Before the Korean Super League, as it was to initially be titled, would get underway, the 11th annual Korea versus Japan match was to be played out in Tokyo on 6th March 1983. The game that day ended in a 1-1 draw, with Kim Kyong-ho scoring for the Koreans.
Sunday, 8th May 1983 was the date penciled in for the opening matches of the Korean Super League. The league was to be played on a tour basis rather than at specific home venues, and the opening matches were scheduled to be played at Dongdaemun Stadium in Seoul, the venue for national team games. Both opening games ended in 1-1 draws, with the two professional teams sharing the spoils, and Daewoo & POSCO drawing the day's other match. The second round of matches were played out the following day, a Monday, at the same venue. POSCO and Yukong Elephants drew 1-1 to move themselves onto the two-point mark, however Hallelujah crushed Kookmin Bank 3-0 to climb to the top of the table.
The Super League took a short break after the sixth round of matches as the 13th President's Cup got underway in Korea in June. The national team advanced to the final comfortably disposing of Thailand, Nigeria, Indonesia and Ghana on the way, where they would face Dutch club side PSV Eindhoven, the team that Korean international Huh Jung-moo had just left after spending three years with. The Dutch ran out 3-2 winners in the final to lift the trophy at the expense of Korea. On 22nd June the national team faced another European club side in Seoul, this time in a friendly competition, and triumphed 3-1 over West German side FC Mainz.
Just three days after that friendly match, the Korean Super League resumed. With such a small number of teams facing each other so regularly, it was inevitable that the championship race would be fairly tight. The rest of the league was operated on a similar tour basis to the opening rounds, with four games being played in the space of two or three days at the same venue. Venues for the matches included Busan, Daegu, Jeonju, Daejeon, Andong, Gwangju, Chuncheon and Masan. Dongdaemun Stadium was the venue for what was essentially a title decider on the second-last day of the season. Daewoo, two points clear at the top of the table, needed only a point from their match against Hallelujah to claim the title, however the Christian club triumphed 2-1 to take the competition to the final day.
Yukong's 4-1 crushing of Kookmin Bank gave them a slim chance of sneaking the title. The four teams – Hallelujah, Daewoo, Yukong and POSCO - were separated by only two points, with the first and second clubs on 18, the third and fourth on 16. The teams arrived at Masan on the 25th September to play the final round of the season. Hallelujah defeated POSCO 1-0 to claim the first Korean Super League championship, and in the day's other match Daewoo and Yukong Elephants drew 0-0. Daewoo's end-of season collapse, which saw them take only one point from their final three games, undoubtedly cost them the title and allowed Hallelujah to claim the crown.
At the tail-end of 1983 the national team began the process of qualification for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Six matches were played in the space of twelve days in Bangkok and the Koreans, losing only the first match against Thailand, did well enough to progress to the second round of games to be held in Singapore in April 1984. Then, the Koreans didn't fare so well. Victories over Bahrain and New Zealand weren't enough to offset the defeats to Saudi Arabia and Iraq, along with a disappointing 1-1 draw with Kuwait, and so yet again the Koreans would be missing out on Olympic football. They did have the small comfort of knowing that they wouldn't be required to qualify for the 1988 tournament that they themselves would be hosting.
