National team defender latest to be implicated in football match fixing

SEOUL, July 5 (Yonhap) -- Hong Jeong-ho, captain of South Korea's Olympic football squad, has been questioned by prosecutors for his possible connection with the ongoing match fixing scandal, the nation's top football league said Tuesday.
According to the K-League, Hong faced questioning from prosecutors in Changwon, about 400 kilometers southeast of Seoul, on Sunday and Monday. He sat out last Saturday's K-League match for his team, Jeju United.
"Hong told us last Friday that he had nothing to do with the case," a K-League official said. "For the time being, we told Jeju to keep him on the bench."



Hong is the latest high-profile star to be linked to the snowballing football match fixing scandal, the first of its kind to rattle the K-League in its 28 years. Eleven players have been indicted for allegedly accepting cash from gambling brokers in exchange for offers to make deliberate mistakes in games. A slew of other active players are either under arrest or under questioning for possible ties.
Last week, Choi Sung-kuk, a former national team forward, came clean about his connection to the schemes.
Hong is a 20-year-old defender who captained South Korea's under-23 team in the continental Olympic qualifying matches last month. He has also appeared in nine games for the senior national team and is being groomed as the new star on defense. He was the first overall pick in the 2010 K-League draft.
Changwon prosecutors said they believe Hong had a hand in Jeju's 5-1 loss to FC Seoul last year. According to Jeju United, Hong has maintained that he wasn't any part of match fixing and that he's never received any money or gifts.
A football official, on the condition of anonymity, said a friend of Hong's acted as a broker and might have pressured Hong to join in on the plot, and added, "I don't think the charges against Hong would be severe enough to warrant an arrest."
jeeho@yna.co.kr