While Korea’s baseball league has entered its final, most exciting stretch with the ongoing best-of-seven Korean Series, the national pastime is being hit by an unlikely but deplorable allegation ― that players were put under illegal surveillance by club officials.
It is alleged that executives of the Lotte Giants obtained footage from surveillance cameras installed at hotels when the baseball team was traveling for road games. Club officials said they conducted the monitoring to find out what the players were doing after the games.
The world of sports is not and cannot be free from problems and scandals, but this is the first time that a case of illegal surveillance has battered pro baseball, which has grown to become the nation’s favorite sport over the past 32 years.
What we don’t understand is that how executives and officials of a popular professional baseball club could consider ― and actually put into operation ― such a systematic surveillance scheme. It is a real problem if they did not know that what they were doing was a crime. If they knew, it is a much bigger problem.
Whether or not they knew they were committing a crime should be determined through an investigation by the authorities, but what is apparent is that they attempted to play down the case and even get away with it.
It was only after a lawmaker, Rep. Sim Sang-jung of the Justice Party, raised the issue at the National Assembly and fans of the Busan-based club began organizing increasingly fierce protests that the club acknowledged the surveillance and reshuffled its top executives.
In view of the importance of the case, the human rights watchdog made the right decision to intercede in the case.
As the National Human Rights Commission of Korea said, the alleged rights violation at the baseball club is a case not only of rights infringement in a sports team but also electronic surveillance, which is a growing problem in society.
But considering that all the watchdog can do based on its probe is to “make policy recommendations” to relevant government authorities, the prosecution must launch a criminal probe into the case.
Determining what happened and punishing those responsible for the illegal surveillance is important because there could be similar cases in sports circles and other segments of society.
In fact, players on sports teams ― both at amateur and professional levels ― are vulnerable to infringements upon their right to privacy, violence and even sexual harassment. The organizational culture of sports teams is often compared to that of the military, but this should no longer justify what are clearly criminal acts.
The Lotte case also should be a wake-up call to Korean society as a whole, as electronic surveillance through security cameras and other means has become a part of daily life here.
Most vulnerable are employees who are easily put under surveillance through cameras at their workplaces. It is concerning to think that there may be more employers who are as ignorant or daring as the Lotte executives.
