SEOUL, South Korea – Ecton Blade, a 3-year-old son of the Kentucky-bred Ecton Park, won the $937,000 Korean Derby on Sunday at Seoul Race Course by three lengths, rewarding the relatively few backers who had made the horse the win-pool favorite in the 10-horse field. Ecton Blade went to post at 2.10-to-1 in the 1,800-meter Derby, favored over the 3.70-to-1 Divide Wind, a horse who had beaten Ecton Blade in a 1,600-meter prep for the Derby on April 8 by three-quarters of a length. Divide Wind, a son of South Korea’s leading stallion Menifee, also a Kentucky-bred, finished fourth. Mask, an 11-1 shot, finished second, while Choinma, another colt sired by Menifee, finished third. The Korean Derby anchors the most popular race card of the year in Korea, a country attempting to build a homegrown racing industry in the shadow of neighbors Hong Kong and Japan. Though handle on Korean races still dwarfs the numbers put up by those two racing behemoths, betting on nearly 300 cards at Korea’s three racecourses still totals approximately $7.7 billion a year, according to the Korean Racing Authority, a government agency that runs racing in the country and owns a handful of stallions here. According to the latest KRA figures, nearly half of that $7.7 billion is bet in the quinella pools, a wager that has largely become irrelevant in U.S. Thoroughbred racing over the past two decades. But far more surprising is the amount of money that Korean bettors wager on win and show bets, and that’s because they bet nearly nothing in those pools – annual win wagering is less than 1 percent of total annual handle, and show betting is approximately 1.3 percent of the total betting. The rest is bet in exacta pools, two different trifecta pools, and a quinella that requires the bettor to select two of the first three finishers. Total wagering on the 10-horse Derby itself was $4.9 million, according to KRA figures, with the quinella pool attracting $1.66 million in wagers and the trio attracting $1.60 million (the trio is a trifecta wager in which the bettor must select the top three finishers in any order). Though the total wagering figure on the Derby was higher than the average annual handle on an entire race card in Korea, it wasn’t a standout performance like you might find in the U.S. with one of its Triple Crown races, such as the Kentucky Derby, which annually handles nearly 50 times the amount of the average U.S. race card (that number is inflated by the large amount of minor tracks operating in the U.S. driving down the average race-card handle, unlike the Korean practice of concentrating all betting attention on just three tracks). Weather for this year’s Korean Derby was pleasant, and racegoers streamed in and out of the six-story facility throughout the day. Most pored over numbers contained in various tabloid-size racing publications sold in and around Seoul and compared those published figures with the estimated payouts for the quinella and trifecta bets that scrolled endlessly throughout the day on in-house monitors and the infield tote board, said to be the largest tote screen in the world. While bettors in Korea are given non-stop information on potential betting payouts in the lead-up to the race, data on horses’ past performances are basic, especially when compared to the amount of data available in North America. However, that does not stop Korean racegoers from betting heavily on races, a phenomenon that is often ascribed to the cultural affinity in Asian societies for numbers-based superstitions and affinities. The first race at Seoul Race Course on Sunday had a post of 10:45 a.m., and two hours later, the KRA began interspersing the Seoul races with races from Busan Race Course, built by the KRA in 2005 in the namesake city in the southeast of Korea. The result was something close to the “seven-and-seven” cards that Ohio Thoroughbred tracks conducted 20 years ago, in which both racetracks alternated their races with each other in an attempt to drive up handle for both cards.  At both Seoul and Busan on Sunday, jockeys attempted to establish their positions by the head of the stretch, at which point riders on horses behind the leaders would fan out to stake claims for individual lanes well afield of competing horses, with some riders going 15 to 18 paths wide of the rail. Longtime observers of Korean racing said the practice was due to the sandy nature of the racing surfaces at the tracks, which creates stinging kickback, especially when the track is wet, as was the case Sunday. Steady rain fell throughout Korea on Saturday through early Sunday morning. Western racing officials have sent track-surface experts to Korea in recent years to advise the KRA on improvements it could make to its tracks to mitigate the kickback, according to representatives on hand Sunday. As a government agency, the KRA is charged with providing funding to the state and promoting racing. The government takes 16 percent of the gross betting handle, with the KRA using the remainder to provide purses, operate its three racetracks, and promote racing and breeding. Takeout on win and show bets is 20 percent, while takeout on all other bets is 27 percent. Racing at the KRA’s three racetracks is largely self-contained, with horses at each of the three tracks required to race against each other except in so-called “open” races, which are the stakes races. To maintain competitive races at each of the three tracks, races have six classes, with one being the highest. Horses are grouped into classes based on ratings assigned by KRA handicappers, though it is common for horses to be bumped up in class in the event of a win. The breeding industry in Korea annually produces approximately 1,300 horses, according to KRA records, and breeders annually import from 100 to 250 horses a year. Representatives of the U.S. have long sought to gain inroads into the country given the phenomenal growth of the South Korean economy over recent decades, but the KRA has also periodically thrown up roadblocks to the importation of a large number of quality horses to bolster the country’s native industry.