Country Korea Republic Number of teams 14 | Founded 1990 | |
Current champions GLA FC Seoul (5th title)
GLB Daegu FC (1st title)
(2016) | ||
Korea Professional Football Reserve League (Hangul: R리그), or R League for short, is the league for reserve teams of professional association football clubs in South Korea.
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The league started in 1990 with five reserve teams of K League member clubs -POSCO Atoms, Yukong Elephants, Daewoo Royals, Hyundai Horangi and Lucky-Goldstar Hwangso. POSCO Atoms won the inaugural title, finishing two point ahead of Yukong Elephants to lift the crown. But league was shortlived for only 1 year and reserve teams participated in semi-professional tournaments such as the National Football Championship.
The competition was relaunched in 2000 with a dual league format. Nine reserve teams were divided into the Central League (currently Group League A) and the Southern League (currently Group League B). Each team played against the other teams in the same league for four times.
In 2001, Police FC joined the R League and Gwangju Sangmu's reserve team joined in 2002.
For the 2009 season, the R League was renamed to its current name and thirteen of the fifteen K League clubs are fielding reserve teams in the league along with the Police FC, giving a total of fourteen participating clubs. Gangwon FC and Jeju United did not participate.
As part of the plan to form the system of promotion and relegation in the K League starting from the 2013 season, the R League was planned to downsize after the 2012 season. The competition was ceased until 2015. Starting from the 2016 season, K League clubs officially announced that they will resume the R League.
Members for 2016 season
The following 14 clubs will compete in the R-League during the 2012 season.