In South Korean Soccer, a Culture of Corruption

On the day South Koreans rejoiced over the selection of Pyeongchang as the host city of the 2018 Winter Olympics, prosecutors continued to peel back layers of a long-hushed dirty secret of the nation's sports landscape.

Since June, 55 professional soccer players have been indicted in the biggest match-fixing scandal in South Korean history. Prosecutors called the problem 'endemic.' Almost 1 in 10 players in the K-League, Korea's professional league, have been indicted, prompting it to introduce lie-detector tests and to break into two eight-team divisions, with teams caught manipulating the outcome of games being relegated to the lower division. The league said it would also double the minimum annual salary for a player to almost $23,000, hoping the added pay would reduce the temptation to take bribes.

Observers say that match-fixing is an outgrowth of a number of problems that have plagued South Korea for decades: widespread mistreatment of young athletes; poor salaries; a culture that demands blind respect of authority; and Korean society's lax ethical standards on corruption.

While cheering Pyeongchang's success, South Koreans hardly seemed to notice that their Olympic campaign was led by three business tycoons who had each been convicted of corruption: Lee Kun-hee of Samsung, Cho Yang-ho of Korean Air and Park Yong-sung, a former chairman of the Doosan conglomerate and now head of the Korean Olympic Committee.

'Koreans are obsessed with winning Olympic golds and hosting megasports events like the Olympics,' said Chung Hee-joon, a professor of sports science at Dong-A University who contends that there is corruption in all sports in South Korea.

'But other than that, they pay little attention, don't care,' Chung said. 'So widespread human rights violations, abuse of young athletes, beatings and violence in sports go ignored.'

Chung's contention was reflected in a 2008 report by the government's National Human Rights Commission that said nearly 80 percent of student athletes in middle and high schools were subjected to physical and verbal abuse from their coaches and older teammates. Of the 1,139 students surveyed, 63.8 percent also reported sexual abuse. In a separate survey on primary school athletes, the commission reported that coaches used 'batons, hands, baseball bats and tennis rackets' to beat young players in the name of discipline.

Nothing galvanizes South Koreans more than major international sports events. Star athletes like the Olympic figure skating champion Kim Yu-na have become national heroes.

But most others languish under minuscule wages and social prejudice against athletes. K-League players who make the starting lineups usually earn only $47,000 a year; lesser players make about $950 a month.

'That makes our young players vulnerable to things like match-fixing,' said Cho Jung-soo, a former head of the Korea Football Association's disciplinary board.

Yeom Dong-kyun, one of the players indicted, told the JoongAng newspaper from prison, 'I joined the match-fixing without much compunction because I had heard that it's widespread in the league.'

In May, another player was found dead in a hotel room. In a suicide note, he apologized for bringing other players into the match-fixing.

'We are at a loss for words,' said Chung Mong-gyu, president of the K-League, 'as we try to apologize for causing disappointment for the people at a time when the whole nation is united in rejoicing over Pyeongchang.'