A scandal that has been simmering in Seoul for a fortnight is now rippling well beyond South Korea's borders, after Ynet picked up reporting on a government audit accusing the Korea Football Association (KFA) of buying sexual services for foreign referees more than a decade ago.
According to the reports, cited by Ynet and corroborated by CNN and South Korean outlets, the KFA arranged and paid for visits to massage parlours and escort services for visiting match officials on at least eight occasions between 2011 and 2012, a period covering World Cup and Olympic qualifying fixtures. The bills, filed under vague or false headings such as "drinks" or standard massages, totalled close to 5.6 million won — roughly $3,950.
The practice first surfaced in a 2016 audit by South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, but the findings sat unpublished for nearly a decade until the broadcaster JTBC exposed them earlier this month. Prosecutors had in fact reviewed the credit-card evidence back in 2017 and decided against pursuing charges, citing insufficient grounds.
Ynet's report — under the headline "Mini bribes for referees, lies and cover-up: the scandal rocking South Korea" — frames the affair as part of a wider reckoning for the KFA, which is also facing a parliamentary inquiry and a police raid tied to the 2024 hiring of former national-team coach Hong Myung-bo.
Hong, now in charge of the senior side, was summoned to a National Assembly hearing on July 30 over his salary and the process that led to his appointment — a separate governance row that has kept the federation under sustained public and political pressure through South Korea's underwhelming 2026 World Cup campaign.
The referee affair has since spread beyond South Korea. The Japan Football Association has confirmed it is investigating four Japanese officials alleged to be among the referees who received the benefits, drawing the story into the wider Asian football community just as continental qualifying business resumes.
In one incident detailed in the audit and widely reported since, four match officials who had overseen a fixture against Oman were taken by KFA staff to a massage parlour, with the association spending 760,000 won (about $536) on the visit alone.
The KFA issued a public apology over the weekend, saying it "deeply apologises for the concern caused," while stopping short of directly disputing the specific findings. The federation says the practices ended in 2013 after it introduced a "clean card" expense system and hired dedicated liaison staff to manage relations with visiting officials.
Under South Korean law, prostitution is illegal, and commentators have noted a 15-year statute of limitations could still theoretically apply to some of the conduct described, though no fresh criminal case has been announced.
Ynet's piece also situates the story within South Korea's broader domestic gender debate, noting that a football federation's use of public and sponsorship money for paid sexual services has struck a particularly raw nerve at a time when the national team's football stock is already low.
There is no suggestion in any of the reporting that match results themselves were fixed or influenced by the referees involved; the scandal centres on improper hospitality and its cover-up rather than confirmed match manipulation.
