K-League football player cut for betting on own team's game

(ATTN: UPDATES with investigation on regular season games)
SEOUL, June 2 (Yonhap) -- A first-division professional football club in South Korea on Thursday cut a player for betting on one of his team's own games.
The Pohang Steelers in the K-League said they have terminated a contract with midfielder Kim Jung-kyum after he wagered on a Steelers' match two months ago.
The move comes amid a widening match fixing scandal involving players from the country's top football league. Five players, including four from Daejeon Citizen, have been arrested on charges of accepting money from gambling brokers and helping their teams lose by deliberately making mistakes in games.
According to the Steelers, Kim was tipped by one of the arrested Daejeon players that the Daejeon team would try to throw its match against Pohang in a K-League Cup contest on April 6. Kim then wagered 10 million won (US$9,280) through a third person on a sports lottery and won 20 million won after Pohang won the game 3-0.
Kim didn't play in that game, the Steelers said.
"Prosecutors haven't yet summoned any of our players and we've confirmed the rest of the team to be innocent," the team said. "We've decided that we can no longer keep a player who's committed grave misconduct with such a lack of professionalism and conscience."
Kim's contract was to expire this year. The 34-year-old joined the K-League in 1999 with the Chunnam Dragons and played 226 career games with three different teams.
Betting on one's own team is considered a cardinal sin in sports. In Major League Baseball, Pete Rose, the all-time hits leader, received a permanent ban from baseball after admitting to betting on his own Cincinnati Reds team as a player and a manager.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, have reportedly expanded their match-fixing probe to the K-League's regular season matches. Up until now, only two K-League Cup contests have been subject to the probe.
According to data provided to prosecutors by Sports Toto, which operates the only licensed sports lottery in South Korea, several regular season games last fall attracted 1 billion won -- the most allowed on a single game -- in betting money. Prosecutors in Changwon, about 400 kilometers southeast of Seoul, said games between Sept. 16-18, Oct. 25-27, and Nov. 1-3 last year drew the maximum amount of bets.
Investigators have previously focused on the K-League Cup, which is held on the sidelines of the regular season. They believe this competition is more vulnerable to match fixing because games are playing to little fanfare on weekdays and because lowly paid players, who may be easily tempted by the lure of a big payday, often get to take the field in those games.
A prosecution official admitted an investigation is under way on games other than the K-League Cup but didn't disclose which matches they were.
jeeho@yna.co.kr