The National Ground League’s promotion contest lurched into a fresh crisis on Tuesday when a parliamentary hearing heard that six clubs’ appeals against stadium licensing decisions had gone to a temporary web portal and were never entered into the league’s case register. Three of the clubs are in playoff positions, and could be barred from promotion if their grounds are not approved.
The hearing was called after four clubs challenged the licensing process in September. A committee in Seoul had been asked to examine whether the league applied its rules fairly; testimony from the league’s own operations director instead exposed a dispute over which website clubs had been told to use. The league has halted playoff preparations while it reviews the appeals.
Receipts at the hearing
On a screen in the hearing room, league operations director Dorina Pap showed two versions of the licensing portal. One, linked in the clubs’ handbook, accepted appeal forms and issued confirmation receipts; the other fed submissions into the league’s live case register. Pap said six appeals appeared on the first site but not the second. “We treated the receipts as acknowledgements, not proof of a completed filing,” she told lawmakers.
That distinction could decide who gets to compete. The league’s rules require clubs to appeal by 30 September, and allow promotion only for teams with an approved ground. The disputed cases concern seating access, drainage and floodlighting at three venues. No club has yet been declared ineligible, but the appeals panel had previously listed the six applications as missing.
A club should not lose its place because the league gave it the wrong door to knock on.
Myrtis Stracke-Bergnaum, chair of Cheongju Loom
Stracke-Bergnaum said her club received an automated receipt after submitting its appeal and had kept a printed copy. She asked the committee to order a fresh review for all six clubs, not just those in the promotion race. Efe Aigbiniode, a sports-governance specialist advising the committee, said the receipt showed clubs had followed the process presented to them, but did not establish whether the league’s technical system received their files.
A playoff deadline closes in
The dispute now threatens a schedule that the league had expected to begin on Saturday 17 October. The competition’s two-legged playoff determines the final promotion place, and the league said any delay beyond this week could force it to move the final into November. That would affect stadium bookings and travel plans for teams arriving from across the country.
Supporters waited outside the committee building in Yeouido as the hearing continued, holding scarves for Cheongju Loom and Suncheon Port. Several said they had already booked transport for the first playoff round. The clubs say they will seek an emergency order if the league excludes them before the appeals are heard.
The league has promised to publish a full list of the disputed submissions by Thursday, 15 October, and says it will not announce playoff pairings before then. Pap told the committee that the temporary portal had been listed in the handbook after a web-address change, but could not say who approved the link. Lawmakers ordered the league to return with that explanation and a timetable for reviewing every appeal.
