Basketball-Korean league bans disgraced coach for match-fixing

SEOUL, Sept 6 (Reuters) - South Korea's top flight basketball league (KBL) has handed down a lifetime ban to disgraced former coach Kang Dong-hee, who was found guilty of fixing matches involving his Dongbu Promy team. Kang was sentenced to 10 months in prison by a district court in August after being found guilty of taking almost $50,000 from brokers to fix four games in 2011. The KBL's disciplinary committee met on Friday and decided to remove him from the league, handing down the heaviest punishment available, Yonhap News reported. Kang, widely regarded as one of South Korea's best ever players and MVP of the playoffs in the KBL's inaugural 1997 season, was an assistant coach at Dongbu until 2009 before he took over as head coach. They finished second in the championship in 2011 and 2012. Basketball is the latest sport in South Korea to be hit hard by match-fixing in recent years with incidents in soccer, volleyball and baseball forcing the government to take a hard-line stance on the issue. The Seoul government threatened to shut down the country's top flight soccer league after 41 players were banned following investigations that revealed widespread corruption. (Writing by Peter Rutherford; Editing by John O'Brien)