China's state-run Xinhua news agency reported Wednesday that Korean soccer fans will donate about 600-thousand dollars to a financially strapped soccer team in China's Yanbian region to help it join a Chinese premier pro soccer league.

The report said that South Korea's Red Devils fan club will hold a donation drive event on Saturday.

Xinhua quoted the soccer team's general manager as saying that the Red Devils will make the donation in consideration of the Yanbian soccer market's great potential.

The manager was also quoted as saying that his team will use the donation as seed money for its return to China's Super League.

The Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture is a region in the northeastern Chinese province of Jilin which has a large ethnic Korean population of more than 850-thousand.