Police on Monday raided a regional office of the state housing developer, Korea Land and Housing Corp. (LH), as part of an ongoing investigation into allegations of land speculation by LH employees.

The Jeonbuk Police Agency said its investigators seized relevant materials at the LH office in Jeonju, 243 kilometers south of Seoul, and the home and vehicle of an unnamed person involved in the case.

"We are executing search warrants for two separate cases and will reveal the details after further investigation," a police official said.

An LH official based at the regional office declined to comment on a matter that is currently under investigation.

The operation is the latest in a series of police raids conducted after two civic groups accused 14 LH officials of using insider information to buy land in Gwangmyeong and Siheung, both south of Seoul in Gyeonggi Province, before the areas were designated as public housing development sites last month.

A government task force has since identified a total of 20 LH officials and 23 employees of local governments and public corporations who are suspected of engaging in speculative land deals.

Separately, Cheong Wa Dae said last week that an internal inquiry found one case of possible land speculation by a mid-level official working for the Presidential Security Service. The man's elder brother formerly worked at the LH office in Jeonju.

The cases have all been transferred to a government probe team led by the police to continue the investigation.

The Jeonbuk Police Agency earlier said that it was working on three internal investigations after receiving intel on "remote" speculation by LH officials. It denied that Monday's raids were in connection with the Cheong Wa Dae official's brother.

The LH scandal has emerged as the biggest political crisis facing the Moon Jae-in administration ahead of key by-elections in April as public discontent over soaring home prices runs high.

Moon called on the South Korean society to join forces to root out illicit property speculation.

The LH incident offers a chance to cut the "ring of real estate corruption" and address the problem in a "fundamental" way, he said at the start of a weekly meeting with his senior Cheong Wa Dae aides.

Eradicating land speculation is not an easy task but a must to make the society more transparent and impartial, he said.

Moon once again stressed the need to keep the policy of sharply increasing the housing supply on track in a bid to maintain the trend of the market "beginning gradually to stabilize."

Meanwhile, Commissioner General Kim Chang-yong, the country's police chief, said in a written briefing with reporters that the government probe team aims to question the accused public officials in police custody.

He also said that the team, which includes officials from the National Tax Service and the Financial Services Commission, has been looking closely at whether any LH officials or their family members conducted transactions under borrowed names.

As of Monday morning, the team was investigating a total of 61 speculation cases involving 309 people, not including the 23 public sector employees who were referred to the team by the government task force. (Yonhap)