K-League Take Steps to Prevent Further Match-Fixing

South Korea’s elite soccer league, The K-League, will double players’ pay and introduce lie-detector tests in attempts to prevent match-fixing, after more than 50 team members were indicted for the offence.

The K-League is also revising regulations to strip teams of the right to compete in the Asian Champions League if players are found guilty of match fixing, the Seoul-based soccer competition said today in a statement on its website.

The statement said that players’ minimum annual salary will rise to US$22,700 starting next year.

The league, which began in 1983 as the Korean Super League, will also adopt a promotion-relegation system from 2013.

South Korean prosecutors on July 7 indicted 46 players from six of the K-League’s 16 teams on charges they accepted bribes to influence games.

Most of the indicted players had been forced by colleagues and gang members to take part in match fixing, the prosecutors’ office in Changwon, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) southeast of Seoul, said in a statement. Prosecutors didn’t name any of the players in their statement.

Prosecutors also indicted another 11 former players and gang members for attempting to influence the outcome of 15 K- League games between June and October last year.

The indictments follow similar charges against nine more players and six other people on June over similar allegations.