This photo shows the signboard outside the Korea Football Association House in Seoul, Jan. 8. Yonhap

The national football governing body announced Tuesday it will resume preparations for the postponed election for its president early next month.

The Korea Football Association (KFA) said it convened an emergency board meeting Tuesday to discuss assembling its election management committee.

All eight members of the committee resigned last Friday while facing allegations of harboring bias toward Chung Mong-gyu, who is pursuing his fourth term in charge. Chung's two rival candidates, Huh Jung-moo and Shin Moon-sun, raised those allegations, with Huh taking the matter to court by filing an injunction to stop the election on Dec. 30.

The Seoul Central District Court granted Huh's injunction last Tuesday, the day before the election was scheduled to take place. Two days after the court's decision, the KFA said the election would instead be held on Jan. 23, but both Huh and Shin rejected the reschedule on the grounds that they had never agreed to the move. The KFA was then forced to postpone the election again when the election committee members stepped down.

During Tuesday's meeting, 16 of 23 board members, attending either in person or online, discussed the composition of the election committee. Per KFA rules, at least six of the eight members must be independent individuals with no ties to the KFA, and that can include people from academia, law and the media.

"To ensure further expertise and an impartial perspective, the board decided to expand participation by members of the media," the KFA said in a statement. "We will be open to recommendations from the media, as well as academia and legal circles."

Mindful of the Lunar New Year holiday during the final week of January, the KFA said it plans to form the new election management committee by the end of this month, so that it can begin preparations for the election in early February.

The committee will then determine the new schedule for the election at a later date, the KFA added.

Acting on demands by all three candidates, the KFA has asked the National Election Commission (NEC) to operate the election process, and it said Tuesday it was still awaiting a response from the state-run watchdog.

The KFA noted that even if the NEC agrees to take over the operations, it will still need its own election committee to handle some internal business. (Yonhap)