Coming off the most tumultuous season in its history, the new-look K-League has adopted major system changes.
The K-League, which was founded in 1983, was marred by its first match-fixing controversy last year. It saw dozens of active and former players indicted or found guilty of their roles in the scandal. Lee Soo-cheol, the former head coach of the military squad Sangmu, many of whose players were investigated, committed suicide in October.
For 2012, the league's changes are designed to fight match-fixing.
First, it has scrapped its auxiliary K-League Cup competition. Most of the games that implicated players tried to fix were K-League Cup contests. K-League Cup games were scheduled on weekdays while K-League regular season matches were held on weekends. The Cup generated little fanfare, and teams often fielded reserves for the competition and rested their stars for regular season contests.
Gambling brokers took advantage of such lack of interest and bribed players to fix scores in K-League Cup matches when there was no television coverage.
In addition, the K-League has introduced the "split" system for this season. The league's 16 clubs will be "split" into two halves, eight teams apiece, based on their records after 30 games.
They will then play seven more games against each other within their half. The two worst clubs in the lower half will be relegated to the second division in 2013. With that, the teams will each play 44 regular season games, up from 30 in 2011.
The league believes the prospect of demotion will encourage players to stay competitive until the end of the season, without being tempted to throw games. Once relegated, clubs will also take big hits to their ticket sales, merchandise sales and other revenue sources.
The K-League is set to adopt the full promotion-relegation system in 2013.
Chung Mong-kyu, the league commissioner, said the league has tried to bring "fun and entertaining" football to fans this year.
"We believe the split system will keep things interesting until the end and teams will stay competitive," Chung said. "Also, we've made extra efforts to ensure fair and transparent officiating. Our games will be refereed in acceptable and reasonable fashion."
The league last year averaged just about 11,300 fans per game, its first increase in average attendance in four seasons, as it battled baseball, the country's most popular professional sport. (Yonhap)