Seoul, July 14 South Korea's special counsel team investigating allegations surrounding former first lady Kim Keon Hee on Monday raided some 10 locations, including the land ministry, as part of its probe into a controversial expressway project suspected of having been rerouted to benefit the Kim family financially.
The special counsel, led by lead prosecutor Min Joong-ki, sent its investigators to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, two subcontractors and other locations to confiscate documents and computer files, officials said.
Allegations have it that the government changed the endpoint of the Seoul-Yangpyeong expressway project to where Kim's family owns land in Yangpyeong, east of Seoul, as the prices of the land would rise if the road is built.
However, those subject to Monday's raid did not include the then Land Minister Won Hee-ryong and Rep. Kim Sun-gyo of the People Power Party, who was the governor of the Yangpyeong county at the time.
Kim Sun-gyo is suspected of making the request to revise the expressway route.
Prosecutors are expected to call in Won and Kim, as well as other ministry officials in connection with the project, for questioning once they examine the evidence obtained from the raid.
The allegations emerged after the authorities decided to consider a review of the route in May 2023, even though the project had already passed a feasibility test in 2021.
The land ministry conducted an internal audit on the project at the request of the National Assembly. It took 18 months for the ministry to deliver its findings, which revealed that some documents detailing the rerouting plans had been deleted before being submitted to parliament, reported Yonhap news agency.
Won scrapped the project in July 2023, as the scandal broke.
On July 8, in relation to this case, a special counsel team raided the national police agency as well as the offices and homes of current and former lawmakers as part of its investigation into corruption allegations involving the former first lady, legal sources said.
In a statement to the media, the team said it was executing a search warrant at the Korean National Police Agency to obtain relevant materials in cooperation with the agency.
The team also dispatched prosecutors to a police station in Chuncheon, about 75 kilometres northeast of Seoul, to carry out search and seizure operations to secure investigation records related to alleged overseas gambling by Unification Church leadership.
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