The technical committee chairman of the Japan Football Association (JFA) resigned in disgrace.
Daily Sports reported on the 8th (Korean time) that "JFA technical committee chairman Kakeyama Masanaga was arrested in France on charges of viewing and watching child pornography and was found guilty."
JFA announced on the 7th in an official statement that "it has terminated the contract of Technical Committee Chairman Kakeyama," and that "he was arrested on the 2nd on a flight to Paris, France, for allegedly viewing child pornography on board the aircraft, and his guilt has been confirmed."
In response, Managing Director Yukawa Kazuyuki apologized, saying, "This is a very regrettable matter and an incident that has seriously damaged the honor of Japanese football." Chairman Miyamoto Hyoyasu also emphasized, "This incident is absolutely unacceptable. We will take this opportunity to conduct a full review of JFA's internal systems and prepare measures to prevent recurrence."
According to L'Équipe and others, the sequence of events is as follows. Kakeyama, who was en route to a business trip to Chile, disembarked during a stopover at a French airport and was immediately arrested by police. A flight attendant on board reportedly witnessed Kakeyama watching an inappropriate video on a tablet featuring a child around 10 years old and promptly reported it.
French police detained him at the airport, and the local criminal court sentenced him to 19 months in prison and fined him 5,000 euros (8.3 million won).
During the investigation, Kakeyama claimed the video in question was "part of an art project." He also explained that "it was an image generated using AI (artificial intelligence)," but the court did not accept his claims.
Meanwhile, Kakeyama is not unfamiliar to Korean football fans. Six years ago, his team defeated the South Korean team led by coach Jeong Jeong-yong at the FIFA U-20 World Cup, causing Korea to be eliminated in the group stage.
Also in April this year, after South Korea lost to Indonesia in the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) U-17 Asian Cup, he left a sarcastic remark that "the level of Korean football is falling overall." In the end, it was not Korea that he had criticized that faced disgraceful resignation, but he himself who met an international scandal and resigned in disgrace.
[OSEN]