South Korea to probe secret surveillance of baseball players

South Korea's human rights watchdog on Friday said it would launch an investigation into allegations that a pro baseball club secretly spied on its players.
It emerged earlier this week that team officials had monitored players via closed-circuit TV cameras installed at hotels where they stayed for away games, prompting the resignation of team president Choi Ha-Jin and two other top club officials.
"Because of the serious repercussions, we decided to launch an investigation today," a spokeswoman of the National Human Rights Commission of Korea told AFP.
The state human rights watchdog will see whether there was any breach of privacy laws, she said.
Choi admitted he had ordered the surveillance of the players between April and June this year in order to keep track of their whereabouts at night after games, but claimed players were told beforehand that they would be monitored.
Players, however, said they hadn't known about the cameras.
Pro baseball is South Korea's most popular spectator sport. The Lotte Giants, based in the southern port of Busan, take pride in their enthusiastic fans, but spectators have fallen in numbers from a peak of 1.37 million in 2008 to 830,000 this year.
The Giants came seventh place in this year's nine-team pennant race.
Source: AFP