Police raids LH headquarters over reinforcing bar scandal

[Photo by Park Hyung-ki]

The South Korean police on Tuesday raided the headquarters of the Korea Land & Housing Corp. (LH) and four other offices over a recent scandal involving missing reinforcing bars in apartment buildings built by the state-owned company.

The raid is part of the police’s efforts to obtain information related to design, construction, and supervision, and to investigate the overall suspicion surrounding the alleged absence of reinforcing bars in the apartments.

Earlier this month, LH requested a police investigation on two separate occasions into a total of 91 entities, including 41 design and supervision firms, as well as 50 construction companies, which were involved in the construction of 20 apartment complexes where reinforcing bars are allegedly missing.

The police assigned the cases to nine provincial and metropolitan police agencies, each responsible for the specific locations of the apartment complexes in question, which have been actively carrying out investigations since mid-August.