By Kang Seung-woo
Staff Reporter
The head of the baseball governing body said Thursday that the organization will conduct more rigorous doping tests on professional baseball players.
Yoo Young-koo, commissioner of Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) unveiled the plan days after former KBO star player Ma Hae-young revealed in his memoir that his colleagues in the late 1990s and early 2000s had resorted to steroid use in an attempt to improve their performance.
``I believe baseball has to be clean of drugs. Particularly, players should not be linked to banned substances in pro baseball, the most popular sport in Korea,'' Yoo said.
``The KBO will activate its anti-doping committee to keep players from falling victim to the body-stimulating drug,'' he added.
``The KBO is now working on a specific plan for drug testing. First of all, we will introduce the regular test, which is used in the Olympics,'' said KBO Director Lee Sang-il.
``Since there are a variety of drugs of late and some of them cannot be detected after being eliminated from body in the short term, we will adopt both regular and irregular anti-doping tests.
``For this, we plan to fix rules that will enable the KBO to check players all year round.''
Furthermore, players in the second-tier league, will also be subject to the medical test as they are more likely to be tempted to resort to performance-enhancing substances.
Lee added: `` all imported players will face mandatory testing, and if testing positive will be checked regularly as long as they stay in the league.''
The Korea Professional Baseball Players Association (KPBPA) has welcomed the decision.
``Using drugs can lead to the destruction of players and the league, so all local players will gladly cooperate with the body,'' said Kwon Si-hyung, the sectary general of the KPBPA.
The retired Ma said in his book Tuesday that he had witnessed several Korean players using steroids during his career, and as a result, some managers have called for a strict investigation into all players, both local and foreign.
The league started drug testing in 2007 on three players at random from each team and conducted two more last year. A total of 72 players were had tests, none of whom tested positive for drugs.