A figure skating judging scandal at the final Winter Olympics for Kim Yu-na was voted the top South Korean sports story of 2014, a poll of local media by Yonhap News Agency showed Tuesday.
   
In the survey of 48 South Korean newspapers and broadcasters, the controversial development in the ladies' singles figure skating competition at the Sochi Winter Games topped the list.
   
Kim came up shy of winning her second straight Olympic gold and settled for silver, as the Russian teenager Adelina Sotnikova claimed the shocking gold amid cries of biased judging among fans and experts. Kim retired from the sport after the Olympics, and her story earned 330 points in the poll.
   
A first place vote was worth 10 points, and a second place was worth nine, and so forth. Kim earned eight first-place votes and 18 second-place votes.
   
At Sochi, Sotnikova earned 224.59 points in total for her first Olympic title, besting Kim's 219.11 points. Kim led the field after the short program with 74.92 points, barely ahead of Sotnikova's 74.64 points. In free skate, Sotnikova topped the competition with 149.95 points despite a landing mistake. Kim, skating last, put together a clean routine but managed 144.19 points to finish more than five points behind the Russian teenager in the overall score.
   
Figure skating experts and fans in and out of South Korea were up in arms over the results, saying Kim was robbed of a sure gold medal. Kim, however, took her score in stride and maintained she could live with the result.
   
South Korea's winless exit from the FIFA World Cup, and the subsequent coaching change, came in second place in the poll. The story earned 17 first-place votes to lead all items and had 326 points overall.
  

South Korea managed just one draw and two losses against Russia, Algeria and Belgium in Group H action in Brazil. Head coach Hong Myung-bo resigned in the aftermath, and Uli Stielike, former German international, stepped in as his successor. Stielike is the first foreign national to lead South Korea since the Dutchman Pim Verbeek, who quit in August 2007.
   
The Samsung Lions' fourth straight championship in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) came in third place with 208 points. In the championship Korean Series, the Lions knocked out the Nexen Heroes in six games to become only the second club ever to win four consecutive titles.
  
Speed skater Lee Sang-hwa won her second straight Olympic gold in the women's 500 meters in Sochi, and her accomplishment earned 202 points for fourth place. She established a new Olympic record with 74.70 seconds in two races.
   
In the KBO, the Heroes' second baseman Seo Geon-chang earned his first MVP honors, completing an improbable journey from an undrafted rookie to the KBO's top player. His Cinderella story ended in fifth place with 198 votes. Seo set single-season records with 201 hits, 135 runs scored and 17 triples, while winning his first batting title with a .370 average.
   
The western port city of Incheon hosted the 17th Asian Games this fall, with North Korea among the participants. The story had 191 points to finish sixth.
  

The host country collected 79 gold medals to finish in second for the fifth consecutive Asian Games, while North Korea earned 11 gold medals to end in seventh place, its first top-10 finish since 2002.
   
On the final day of the Asian Games, a high-level delegation from Pyongyang, led by Hwang Pyong-so, vice chairman of the National Defense Commission, made a surprise trip to Incheon and met with South Korean Prime Minister Chung Hong-won, among other officials here.

  
At the Winter Olympics, Viktor Ahn, born Ahn Hyun-soo in South Korea, swept up three gold medals in short track speed skating. The circumstances that led to Ahn's decision to become a Russian citizen in 2011 came back into the spotlight, as he was portrayed as a victim of factional feuds within South Korean short track. His story ranked seventh with 102 points.
   
Mixed performances by two South Korean big leaguers came in eight with 133 points. Ryu Hyun-jin, a left-handed starter for the Los Angeles Dodgers, won 14 games for the second consecutive season despite battling injuries. Outfielder Choo Shin-soo, who signed a seven-year, US$130 million contract with the Texas Rangers before the 2014 season, also had injury issues. He batted only .242 with 13 home runs and 40 RBIs, his worst numbers in three years.
  
Football icon Park Ji-sung, the first South Korean to play in the English Premier League, retired from the sport this year, and his tale had 119 points for ninth place.
   
Teenage golfing sensation Kim Hyo-joo dominated the Korean LPGA
(KLPGA) Tour and also captured a major championship on the LPGA Tour. Her monumental season rounded out the top 10 with 100 points.
   
Kim led the Korean tour in wins, money, scoring average and the Player of the Year points race. She also became the first player to surpass 1 billon won ($910,000) in earnings in one year.
   
Kim, 19, also claimed the Evian Championship in September and earned full-time playing status on the LPGA Tour for next season. (Yonhap)