All regulatory requirements have been fulfilled and Korea’s third thoroughbred racecourse will definitely be built at Yeongcheon.

The site in Yeongcheon that will be a racecourse by 2014

The site in North Gyeongsang Province was selected by the Korea Racing Authority (KRA) in February 2010 and the planning and approval process is now complete. However, in exchange for granting another track, the regulator has demanded further draconian restrictions on gambling on horse racing.

To start with, the KRA will have to close one off-track betting site this year and a further two next year if Yeongcheon is to be able to open in 2014. The KRA currently maintains 34 off-track betting “Plazas” in towns and cities across Korea in order to provide a legal betting outlet for punters who cannot get to the tracks in Seoul and Busan. Anecdotal evidence suggests that illegal betting houses have been more than happy to fill the void in areas where no legal outlets are available, especially since the regulator-enforced closure of the K-Netz online and phone betting platform two years ago. Depressingly, this looks set to increase.

Secondly, and perhaps more fundamentally, the KRA is to agree to press ahead with requirements for all legal punters to be issued with an electronic ID card which will record all transactions they make at the track. The idea, which has been in trials since last year, is ostensibly to identify potential problem gamblers at an early stage and to prevent punters exceeding the 100,000 won per race bet limit by visiting multiple betting windows or terminals. On the plus side, there are suggestions that it may also be used as a “mileage card” whereby punters will get a 1% rebate on all wagers.

Naturally the massive amount of personal information it will collect nor the big juicy contracts to be handed out for setting up and administering the scheme have nothing to do with it.

So it looks like we are set for Yeongcheon – out in the middle of nowhere somewhere in the vague vicinity of Daegu. It isn’t the most logical place to put a racetrack but then neither was the inaccessible site where they decided to build the Busan track. And neither was the place where they decided to build the Jangsu Training Centre in Jeolla Province (levelling half a mountain in the process instead of going somewhere flat). However, those planning decisions worked out very well for some people. No doubt Yeongcheon will too.

It wouldn’t be a blank weekend without an update on the goings-on in the Korean gambling world. And there’s been plenty to catch up on.

Strong Start: Pension Lottery 520

Last December, we reported on the new Annuity Lottery being introduced. It finally debuted at the beginning of July under the name “Pension Lottery 520” with winners receiving 5 Million Korean Won each month for twenty years.

There are two winners each week with the draw live on the YTN News Channel on Wednesdays at 7:40pm. Each ticket costs 1000 Won with 6.3Million tickets issued weekly. Sales so far are reported to have been stronger than expected.

Next up is the age-old subject of casinos. The Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Sport is once more pushing for Korean citizens to be allowed into casinos. Korea has 19 casinos up and down the country, but 18 of them are only open to foreigners. The Culture Ministry is not known for supporting racing – which is run by the rival Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Farming – when it comes under regulatory attack, so it will be interesting to see how this one plays out in the weeks ahead.

Culture Minister Jung Byoung Guk as he likes to be seen on his website

A lifting of the ban would possibly have disastrous social consequences in a country like Korea but it is impossible not to accept that Culture Minister Jung Byung Guk has a point when he notes “(it is) absurd for a democracy to forbid its own citizens from engaging in gambling while allowing foreigners to do it.”

Incidentally, Jung Byung Guk looks like a minister worth getting to know if his twitter feed and website are anything to go by.

Last up, Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office have indicted three people for running an illegal “virtual horse racing” betting ring. The three are accused of running books on live streams of virtual horseracing (of the type used in many countries around the world) from servers in Hong Kong to Korean punters. Turnover of the illegal operation is reported to have been 8.7 Billion Korean Won.

Illegal virtual horse racing would appear to be on the rise in Korea both on and offline. On the way out of the race track, it is common to have a cigarette lighter thrust in your hand advertising a “Screen Racing Room.”

Cigarette lighters on the way out of Seoul Race Park offer betting Screen Racing as well as something called "Prono"

These operate on the same principle as the online ones only the betting is done in person. Typically there will be a mobile number to ring – sometimes the numbers will direct punters to a website for online gambling and sometimes to a physical location for “live’ gambling.

Interestingly – and perhaps tellingly – on the reverse of these adverts are listings for something called “Prono”, both “Korean and Japanese” for 30,000 won. The telephone number (redacted in the picture to protect the not so innocent – and because Gyongmaman likes his kneecaps in working order) is the same on both sides.

As always, we finish any article on gambling regulation in Korea with the following quotation:

“Currently foreign tourists are able to buy chips only with cash…Government officials said this has discouraged non-Koreans from gambling here adding if visitors were allowed to purchase chips with plastic, they would spend more money”. (Korea Times, September 2009)

Just when it looked like it couldn’t get any more depressing, the K-League “Match-Fixing” saga did just that today as a second footballer linked to the fixing of professional football matches in Korea was found dead at a hotel in Seoul. Jung Jong Kwan of K3 side Seoul United, and formerly of K-Leauge outfit Jeonbuk Motors, wrote in an apparent suicide note that he was a broker involved in the fixing of matches.

Seoul United, Jung Jong Kwan's last team, play Cheonan City in this match from last year's semi-pro K3 League. The yellow advertising board is for Sports Toto

So far, five players have been arrested and the affair is also thought to have led to another player, Incheon United goalkeeper Yoon Gi Won, taking his own life earlier this month (although Yoon’s death is yet to be formally linked to match-fixing). No mater how it plays out, it is clear that for all aficionados of Korean professional Sport and especially those who enjoy the occasional (legal) punt, things are not going to be the same for a very long time.

Betting on football matches in Korea is legal through a quasi-governmental organisation called Sports Toto but it is far from clear as to whether the fixing – which has been confirmed to include a match between Daejeon Citizen and Pohang Steelers in the League Cup (equivalent to the English Carling Cup) earlier this season – involved was designed to benefit bets wagered on correct score betting on the Toto or on illegal markets. See this thread on the Rokfootball.com forum for an excellent summary of the situation and hypothesis on how the fix may have happened.

The K-League has two types of clubs. The first type are the corporate-owned ones; FC Seoul (LG/GS), Suwon Bluewings (Samsung), Jeonbuk Motors, Ulsan Tigers & Busan I’ Park (all various incarnations of Hyundai), Jeju United (SK) and Pohang Steelers (POSCO). Also included in this group is Seongnam Ilhwa, owned by the Unification Church of Reverend Moon Sun Myung (better known as “The Moonies”). The others are “Citizen” teams, without a large backer. Without the financial clout of their rivals they are unable to offer big salaries and usually make up the also-rans in the K-League championship. All players implicated so far have been members of Citizen clubs. Just as in racing in Korea, the gangs know who to target.

Worse still there are rumours that K-League clubs knew exactly what was going on but opted to quietly terminate the contracts of players they knew to be involved in accepting bribes. If true, this is potentially devastating both for the K-League and for legal betting in Korea. The National Gaming Control Commission do not miss a trick in their war on legal gambling. The K-League has asked Sports Toto to remove its matches from its products, at least for the forseeable future. This is dangerous. Once this happens, organised crime will once more hold the monopoly over football betting in Korea, just as they do over off-track horse racing betting in many parts of the country since the enforced closure of the KRA’s “K-Netz” internet and telephone betting service.

Two men are dead and others are languishing behind bars. It’s both a human and a sporting tragedy. But it is not the fault of Sports Toto. As long as competition occurs, there will be those who will find a way to bet on it. Making the legal means to do so as attractive as possible is to everyone’s benefit.

Hunch Bet Could Have Landed Massive Pay-Out / Quinella One Of Biggest Ever In Korea

It all sounds so obvious now: A filly and a mare taking on mostly males, they both had the word “Sky” in their names on a day when the sky was blue and beautiful and a young lady jockey coming in to replace the injured former Champion jockey on one of them. Surely a hunch bettor’s dream. Forget wondering why I didn’t even consider a few hundred Won, in the cold light of day, I have no idea why I didn’t put the mortgage on Burning Sky and Sky Center in Race 9 at Seoul Race Park on Sunday!

Let's Have A Look At What You Could Have Won...

130/1 shot Burning Sky and Hwang Soon Do led 50/1 Sky Center and Kim Hae Sun across the line to land one of the most unlikely results Seoul Race Park has seen in recent times. The quinella paid 1587.7 while the exacta yielded returns of 5409.0. With 943,233,500 Won (about $850,000) in the exacta pool, someone evidently had a good Sunday evening.

The exacta is generally the second most popular bet after the quinella. The Quinella pool had approximately $3 Million in it while there was $750,000 in the Trio (first three in any order), the returns of which were “only” 786.4 after hot favourite Super Yonggwang finished third. $45,000 was put in the win pool and $70,000 in the place for a total handle for the race of around $5 Million. With the KRA handing over 27% of that to the government for them to distribute as they see fit, one wonders just how seriously politicians want to clamp down on racing).

Sky's the limit: Burning Sky and Sky Center complete a 5409/1 exacta

* Those pay-outs were by no means the biggest in Korean history. Here is a full list of longest odds for all six bet types. With the exception of Dream Team, who made up the second part of the exacta, all involved were fillies:

Win: 382.0 – Seoul, 24 November 2001, Race 1: Three-year old filly Swing recorded her first and only victory.

Place: 59.9 – Seoul, 20 November 2004, Race 2: Filly Big Crown finished second. Her win odds were 571.3

Quinella: 7328.8 – Seoul, 5 December 1998, Race 4: Heukkwang (169.5) and Keumbae (198.4) were first and second but not until the horse over the line first Mubidongja, was disqualified. Some punters would have been left feeling sick as Mubidongja himself was a 90/1 chance.

Exacta: 15954.3 – Seoul, 26 October 2003, Race 5: Storm (77.9) beat Dream Team (193.5. Not many saw it coming.

Quinella Place: 1859.8 – Busan, 12 May, 2006, Race 5. An odds-on shot won but nine lengths behind the winner were Nammyeong and Jisang Choego – both sent off well over 100/1.

Trio: 25661.9 – Busan, 7 February 2010, Race 4 – This bet has only been available for a couple of years but it has already produced by far and away the biggest winning odds. Angel Collar, Dapyeon and Grace Thunder combining for the 1,2,3. However, there were no life-changing sums won that day. The pool contained a comfortable – if probably disappointing to the winner – 30 Million Won in it.

(Figures are from the KRA)