After Seoul United FC football player Chung Jong-kwan, 30, hanged himself Monday, confessing in a suicide note that he was involved in a growing match-fixing scam, the Changwon Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday that it will focus on who directed and funded the gambling brokers who lobbied players to deliberately lose matches.

Prosecutors were investigating Chung, a main suspect in the match-fixing scam, and also arrested Gwangju FC goalkeeper Sung Kyung-mo, 31, on Thursday. Sung played with Chung on the K-League’s Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors FC from 2003-2004. Prosecutors said Chung introduced Sung to the gambling brokers, who gave him 100 million won ($92,600) to lose a match against Busan I’Park FC on April 6.

But Chung killed himself Monday in a hotel room in Apgujeong-dong, southern Seoul, saying in his note, “The arrested players aren’t at fault; I ordered them to do it [match-fixing].”

The prosecutors’ office arrested Sung, the two brokers and six other Daejeon Citizen FC football players. The office said it will indict all of them in early July on charges of being involved in the match-fixing scam.

Prosecutors have confirmed that gambling brokers bribed Daejeon Citizen FC and Gwangju FC football players so they could win the sports lotteries Proto and Toto. But the prosecutors said whoever designed the scam and came up with the money to pay off the players, as well as the method of manipulating matches, are still being investigated. Chung, unfortunately, was an important source about the scam, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors assume that if brokers and players failed in making good on predetermined matches, other people, such as gangs, could have punished them. Witnesses say one of the brokers arrested by prosecutors was in a close relationship with a local gang based in Masan, South Gyeongsang, called the “Northern Masan Gang.”

The Northern Masan Gang, however, was dissolved two years ago, so prosecutors say other gangs could be involved. Meanwhile, sources say there is a rumor that prosecutors became aware of the match-fixing scam when people who had pooled money to bet on the game on April 6 complained to prosecutors after they were told by the lottery companies that the maximum number of bets had already been reached.


By Kim Hee-jin [heejin@joongang.co.kr]