While they finished their debut season as 3rd place, the team's striker Baek Jong-chul became the K League Top Scorer, scoring 16 goals in 28 matches.

Beginning in the 1990 season, the club moved their franchise to Ulsan, where the headquarters of several branches of owner company Hyundai are located at, from Gangwon Province.

Ulsan won their first ever league title in 1996, beating Suwon Samsung Bluewings 3–2 on aggregate in the championship playoffs.

After the exodus of key players like Kim Hyun-seok and a terrible start in the 2000, manager Ko Jae-wook resigned in the middle of the season.

Although they lost their first match in the competition against JEF United Ichihara Chiba 3–2, they beat Dalian Shide 4–0 and Gamba Osaka 6–0 to clinch the trophy.

They repeated the merciless attacks in the AFC Champions League that season, beating Al-Shabab 6–0 in the first leg of the quarter-finals.

Kim Ho-kon did not enjoy Ulsan fans' full support for his first few seasons at the club, mainly because of his defensive tactical style and unsatisfying outcomes.

[citation needed] The 2011 season was a dramatic changeover; Ulsan won their fifth Korean League Cup, beating Busan IPark 3–2 in the final.

[8] Ulsan Hyundai went trophyless for three years after both Cho Min-kook and Yoon Jong-hwan failed to guide the club to any major honours.

[10] Three years later, Kim also led Ulsan Hyundai to victory in the 2020 AFC Champions League, defeating Iranian club Persepolis 2–1 in the final.

[13][14] The 2022 title was won in dramatic fashion, as Ulsan defeated rivals Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors, the winners of the previous five K League 1 seasons, with two goals scored by Hungarian international Martin Ádám in injury time.

[16] In April 2024, the team qualified for the expanded 2025 FIFA Club World Cup by defeating Yokohama F. Marinos at home in the first leg of the semi-final of the 2023–24 AFC Champions League.

[21] Ulsan's on-pitch success led to an all-time high average attendance in 2024, with the club recording 348,119 fans across 19 home games in the season,[22] the second highest in the league behind only FC Seoul.

The rivalry is one between two of the wealthiest industrial cities in South Korea, with Ulsan being a global center for shipbuilding, automotive manufacturing, and oil refining, while Pohang is home to steel giant and Steelers owner POSCO.

Once a one-sided affair, Ulsan's eventual triumph over Jeonbuk in the 2022 season led to an intensification of an already heated rivalry that is arguably still the biggest matchup in the league.