Two pro football players arrested over alleged match fixing

CHANGWON, South Korea, May 25 (Yonhap) -- Two active players in South Korea's top division professional football league and two gambling brokers have been arrested in connection with alleged match fixing, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Prosecutors in this southeastern city, located about 400 kilometers from Seoul, said a goalkeeper and a midfielder, playing for separate teams in K-League, received money from gambling brokers in April, in exchange for deliberately making mistakes to allow their clubs to lose.
They said the midfielder took 120 million won (US$108,960) and the goalkeeper received 100 million won. Identities of the players and their clubs were withheld.
Prosecutors believe the two brokers, one of whom is a former pro footballer, purchased sports lottery tickets and bet against the teams to which the arrested players belonged, and then made large sums of money as a result of alleged match fixing.
According to investigators, gamblers bet on matches during the K-League Cup tournament, an auxiliary event held on the sidelines of the K-League regular season.
Prosecutors said the goalkeeper in question appeared in four of his team's five games in the group stage of the K-League Cup, and allowed 11 goals in those four games. The midfielder played only one of his team's matches and was substituted for later. His team lost that game.
Prosecutors are investigating whether there are other players who received money in exchange for committing costly mistakes.
There have been other cases of match throwing in local football, all of them involving lower levels of competition where players aren't as highly paid as K-Leaguers.
In 2008, two players in the K3 League, a third-division league comprising amateurs, were arrested for receiving cash from Chinese gamblers to help throw games. Their team folded later that year. That same year, players from the second-division National League were questioned by police over similar charges.
jeeho@yna.co.kr