Daejeon Hana Citizen

The bowl on the northern edge of Daejeon was built for the 2002 World Cup, and it has held 40,535 seats ever since. The club moved in and stayed.

What came first was the idea of a club owned by the people who watched it. Daejeon Citizen was formed in 1997 as the first community-owned side in South Korean football, and it carried that ownership for more than two decades before Hana Financial Group took over the operating rights at the end of 2019 and added its name to the badge. Green joined purple in the kit; the older word, Citizen, stayed.

The second tier has taken up a large share of those years. Adriano scored 27 goals in 2014 to carry the club up as champions, and after another spell below, promotion came again through the play-offs in 2022. Then, in 2025, under Hwang Sun-hong, the side finished second in K League 1 — the highest the club has ever placed in the top flight.

Two academy products left for Europe: Hwang In-beom, later a South Korea regular and a Feyenoord player, and Bae Jun-ho, who joined Stoke City in 2023. The rivalries carry their own names — the Bank Derby against Daegu FC, matching one sponsor's bank against another, sits alongside the Chungcheong meetings with Chungnam Asan.

Still, the man remembered above all of them played one afternoon in 2001. Kim Eun-jung scored the only goal of the Korean FA Cup final against Pohang Steelers, the club's single major trophy. His number 18 has not been worn since.