S. Korea holds football players for match-fixing

South Korean prosecutors said on Sunday they had arrested three more football players for alleged involvement in a growing match-fixing scandal, Yonhap news agency reported. The three play for Daejeon Citizen, a club based in the central city of Daejeon. Two of the team's players and two suspected match fixing brokers had already been arrested. The detained players are suspected of receiving money to help fix the result of an April 6 match against Pohang Steelers, which Daejeon lost 3-0, Yonhap said. Rumours abound about match-fixing in South Korea's professional football league. Newspapers say football clubs tend to hush up such scandals and have been silently expelling players implicated in match-rigging since last year. Players are exposed to growing temptation because the country's illicit online gambling sites, many of them operated by crime rings in South Korea and China, have been growing exponentially, news reports said. The K-League will ask authorities to take its games off Sports Toto, the country's only licensed sports lottery, for a while to prevent match-fixing, league secretary general Ahn Gi-Heon told reporters Thursday. "Many club representatives felt it was only a few players (involved) and it shouldn't affect the entire league," Ahn said, adding his office would form a committee to eliminate corruption.