Ex-minister detained

South Korean investigators on Wednesday detained the country's former health minister as they expand their inquiry into a corruption scandal involving impeached President Park Geun-hye.

The special prosecution team now has 48 hours to decide whether to request a formal arrest warrant for Moon Hyung-pyo. Moon faces allegations that he pressured the National Pension Service to support a controversial merger deal between two Samsung affiliates last year, even though the fund's stake in one of the companies lost an estimated hundreds of millions of dollars in value.

Investigators also summoned Kim Sang-ryul, Park's former senior secretary for education and culture, to look into allegations that the presidential office kept a "blacklist" of cultural figures deemed as unfriendly to Park's administration and denied them state support.