SOCCER WORLD CUP AFTERMATH:FIFA HAVE launched an investigation into allegations that the North Korean World Cup coach Kim Jong-Hun and players were reprimanded by the government after their early exit from this year's tournament in South Africa.

Last month, Radio Free Asia said that the Korean squad, apart from two foreign-based players, were subjected to “harsh ideological criticism” after they lost all three matches and conceded the most amount of goals by a team at the World Cup.

“We sent a letter to the football federation to tell us about their election of a new president and to find out if the allegations made by the media that the coach and some players were condemned and punished are true,” Fifa president Sepp Blatter said yesterday.

“We are doing this as a first step and we will see how they answer.”

After starting only their second World Cup brightly with a 2-1 defeat by five-times champions Brazil, North Korea were humiliated 7-0 by Portugal and easily beaten 3-0 by Ivory Coast.

Blatter said the investigation was launched after Fifa executive committee member Chung Mong-joon, from South Korea, had delivered new information on the issue.

Asian Football Confederation president Mohamed Bin Hammam, who recently travelled to the secretive communist nation, said he was hopeful the investigation would prove conclusive.

“There was an unconfirmed report that these players have gone through torture or something like that, but I can’t confirm that.

“I haven’t seen anything with my eyes or heard anything with my ears. Maybe this Fifa investigation can clear the air.”

Blatter, Bin Hammam and Chung were in Singapore to launch the soccer tournament at the inaugural Youth Olympic Games.

Blatter also said that the issue of goalline technology is on the agenda for the International Football Association Board’s (IFAB)October meeting.

Blatter said that IFAB, the body responsible for determining the rules of the sport, had agreed in their July meeting to put the issue on their agenda for their official gathering in Wales from October. 19th-20th.

“At this meeting (in October), we will bring the point of goalline technology,” Blatter said.

“It is now on the this agenda.”

The debate on the of the use of technology was raised again when England’s Frank Lampard was denied a goal in their World Cup second round defeat to Germany in June, despite television replays showing the ball clearly crossing the goalline.

Soccer remains one of the few major sports to resist the use of technology, with tennis, cricket, rugby, NBA basketball and American football all using applied science successfully.

Blatter, said that he was in favour of using technology to rule on such contentious decisions providing it was reliable.

“My personal opinion on goal technology has never changed, I have said if we have an accurate and simple system then we will implement but so far we have not had a simple, nor an accurate system.”

IFAB decided in July to expand their use of two additional referees officiating matches with the method also being employed in the Champions League and the Uefa Super Cup this season after it debuted in the Europa League last year.

Blatter (74), flanked by Mohamed Bin Hammam, Chung Mong-joon and Singapore FA president Zainudin Nordin, said that a number of groups would be able to present their solutions at the meeting. “The Cairos-Adidas system said they will have something more simple and the Italian group presented by the Italian FA said they now have a system which is absolutely accurate.

“We have the Hawk-Eye again and then a Swiss watch company Longines, they said we have something that will beat everything so in this meeting all of these people can come and present their different items.”

German manufacturers Cairos Technologies said last month that they had been asked to make changes to their product by IFAB but had heard nothing from the law-making board after rectifying the technology to appease them.