South Korea's financial authorities will increase surveillance on speculative movements in local shares this week, market sources said Monday.

A team of officials from the Financial Services Commission (FSC), the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), the Korea Exchange and prosecutors will launch a probe into price-rigging activities, according to sources.

The local stock market has been suffering from price-rigging deals involving several so-called "celebrity shares," which are usually related to politicians or celebrities. These shares have become the darlings of investors wishing to earn a windfall.

The joint probe is in line with a set of measures unveiled by the government in April to eradicate market abuse on the local stock market.

President Park Geun-hye vowed during last year's presidential campaign to stem unlawful acts on the stock market as they have resulted in financial losses for retail investors, hurting the livelihoods of the underprivileged.

The government pledged in April to grant more judicial power to financial authorities, allowing them to obtain online communication records and place travel bans on suspects.

Currently, public investigators from the FSC, the country's top financial watchdog, have judicial police power, but can only carry out raids with a search warrant.

The FSS, the executive body of the FSC, also has few judicial grounds to conduct a probe even though it is in charge of preliminary investigations, because it is a private entity by law, not a government institution.

The revised rules, slated to be in effect in a month, will enable both the FSC and the FSS to take swift actions when investigating, from taking full control of probes to forwarding the case to the prosecutors' office. (Yonhap News)