GLASGOW, May 29: South Korean officials admitted today that a match between their players may have been fixed in the World Championships here yesterday and apologised to the International Badminton Federation (IBF).

A statement from the national team manager Kwon Seung Taik accepted that the light-hearted encounter in which the seeded partnership of Ha Tae-Kwon and Kim Shin-Young lasted a mere eight minutes in the second round against Kim Dong Moon and Ra Kyung-Min may not have been competitive.

Kwon, however, denies any involvement by the Korean management in any arrangement of the result, citing the friendship and long association of two of the players as a possible reason.

Kwon's remarks were in a three-page response to the World Championships referee, Torsten Berg who reported the conduct of the match between the four Koreans to the IBF management committee.

``We recognise the referee can decide this match is out of the spirit of competition....And we also acknowledge some spectators may think there were prior arrangements as to who should win,'' admits Kwon.

``We insist however it cannot have happened that the team manager instructed specific players should win or lose their games,'' he added.

In support of his claim the innocence of the management in this affair, Kwon cites the South Korean response when the IBF complained about the display of Kim Hak-Kyun in last year's Thomas Cup in Auckland.

Kim was accused of not trying against Malaysia, the South Korean management suspended the player for three months, and the national coach resigned.Kwon suggests as a reason for the conduct of yesterday's World Championship match ``the long-term friendships among the players concerned.''

He said that Kim Dong Moon and Ha Tae-Kwon, the men on opposite sides of the net were born in the same town, Chun Ju city, went to the same school, have the same ages, and are now at the same university.

The manager concludes that they were ``confused'' as to how to play the match, and might have considered Ha had a better chance of doing well in the men's doubles and Kim in the mixed doubles.

The public perception of the match was that stress-free progress of the last 16 was given to a pair which has the best chance of winning South Korea a world title.

Kim Dong-Moon won the Olympic mixed doubles title in Atlanta and his partner Ra Kyung-Min won a silver in the same event. Because their partnership is new they are unseeded, hence making possible an early meeting of such strong combinations.

Fixing matches in badminton is an issue which has raised itself several times in recent years. Accusations were most conspicuous after the 1992 All-England final in which the favourite Zhao Jianhua sensationally lost to his compatriot Liu Jun, enabling the lesser rated to gain enough ranking points for a third Chinese men's single player to qualify for the Barcelona Olympics.

There were also questions raised as to how competitive was this year's All-England women's singles, in which Ye Zhoaying captured the title for the first time in her third final. It took only 17 minutes to beat her Chinese compatriot Gong Zhichao.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.