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| ▲ Members of the Korea Professional Football League (K League) disciplinary committee hold a meeting on four Ulsan Hyundai FC players over racist comments made on social media at the K League headquarters in Seoul on June 22, 2023. (Yonhap) |
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| ▲ Ulsan Hyundai FC player Lee Myung-jae arrives at the Korea Professional Football League headquarters in Seoul on June 22, 2023, to attend a disciplinary hearing over making racist comments online. (Yonhap) |
(LEAD) football players-discipline
(LEAD) 3 K League players suspended for 1 match over racist comments
(ATTN: ADDS details, photos)
By Yoo Jee-ho
SEOUL, June 22 (Yonhap) -- Three players for the South Korean football club Ulsan Hyundai FC were each slapped with a one-match suspension Thursday for making racist comments online.
The Korea Professional Football League (K League) also ordered the trio of players, Lee Myung-jae, Lee Gyu-sung and Park Yong-woo, to pay 15 million won (US$11,580) in fine.
A fourth member of the club who had also participated in the online exchange, Jung Seung-hyun, was not disciplined.
Thursday's meeting was believed to have been the first disciplinary session on racial discrimination in K League's 40-year history.
Separately, Ulsan received a 30 million-won fine.
The comments in question were made on the Instagram page for Ulsan defender Lee Myung-jae about two weeks ago.
In a reply to a post, Lee Gyu-sung referred to Lee Myung-jae as a Southeast Asian player, in an apparent jab at the dark tone of his skin. Park Yong-woo called Lee "Sasalak," after Sasalak Haiprakhon, a Thai player who spent the 2021 season with another K League 1 club, Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors.
Jung Seung-hyun and a club official also played along in the comment section, though the K League did not suspend Jung because he did not make any specific reference to Sasalak or any discriminatory comment.
Fans who saw this exchange made a screen grab of the conversation and shared the image on fan community sites or with the media, accusing the players of being racist toward Southeast Asian people.
Lee Myung-jae deleted the post, while Park wrote an apology on his own Instagram page. Both the club and Ulsan head coach Hong Myung-bo issued apologies last week. Ulsan also said they will issue their own penalties on the players.
All four players attended the hearing to state their cases and apologized in front of cameras before the meeting.
"Although the players may not have intended to insult or belittle a particular ethnic group or individual, we determined that making a joke out of a person's skin color or appearance constituted racial discrimination or violation of human rights," the K League's disciplinary committee said in a statement. "When handing down penalties, we used similar instances involving social media postings in foreign leagues as our reference."
The Korea Football Association (KFA), the national governing body of the sport, previously said it will also consider opening its own disciplinary proceedings following the K League's decision.
From this quartet, Jung Seung-hyun and Park Yong-woo played for the South Korean national team in friendlies against Peru and El Salvador this month.
Following the Peru match last Friday, South Korea head coach Jurgen Klinsmann defended his use of the two players in hot water, saying, "Young people always make mistakes."
"I am always on their side, because I myself make my own mistakes and I keep making mistakes," Klinsmann said then, "For me, it's important to see players grow, and that players continue to have the willingness to listen to the coaches or the people that are next to them and to go basically in a period where they feel like, 'I'm growing as a person but also I'm growing as a player.'"
Klinsmann had a press conference with his coaching staff earlier Thursday while the disciplinary meeting was under way in the same building, the KFA House. He reiterated his earlier points and said he will not be shy about calling up Jung and Park again for future matches.
"I will always put myself in front of the players," he said. "When they come to the national team, they will know they will always have our support."
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