Anchor: The prosecution says it has indicted 31 people, including 18 athletes, involved in match-fixing allegations. Kim Soyon has the details.

Report: The Daegu District Public Prosecutors' Office says it has indicted 31 people on charges related to match-fixings, which violate the National Sports Promotion Act.

The office has announced its results from a probe into match-fixing allegations stemming from the nation’s professional sports leagues. Fifteen people have been detained and 16 others are being indicted without detainment.

The probe found that in men’s volleyball, 14 players were involved in the rigging of 17 matches over two seasons between 2009 and 2010, while one match was fixed in the women’s league during the 2010-11 season.

The players involved in such foul play purposely threw their games by tossing or receiving balls in an unstable manner so that the judges and the audience wouldn’t notice their gimmicks.

In the case of volleyball, the brokers who lured the players into participating in the match fixings ordered them to help their team lose with a certain margin of points against their rival team. The players were paid dividends in return.

Prosecutors say they received one and a half to five million won per game for fixing the matches.

In pro baseball, the Seoul-based LG Twins’ pitcher Kim Seong-hyun has been arrested for taking kickbacks of seven million won for fixing three matches. His teammate Park Hyun-jun received five million won for rigging two games.

Unlike volleyball, it’s difficult to fix the winning outcome in baseball. The two pitchers used the tactic of issuing first-inning walks on purpose.

Park Eun-seok, a senior prosecutor at the Daegu office, says that through the investigation, all the rumors about match-fixing in the pro volleyball circuits and baseball league have been found to be true for the first time. He said the scandals will help ring alarm bells concerning the serious moral hazard of professional athletes.

Kim Soyon, KBS World Radio News.