Law revisions will be sought to impose a maximum life sentence if public officials who oversee land and housing affairs engage in land speculation using insider information.

They may also need to pay fines three to five times the profit they gained from such speculative activities.

The revision is one of many preventive measures being discussed following the scandal surrounding employees of the state-run Korea Land and Housing Corporation, who are being probed for suspicions they used insider information to buy land for profit.

Proposed revisions to the Special Act on Public Housing were announced Monday by two civic groups - People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy and Lawyers for a Democratic Society - who joined forces with Justice Party lawmaker Sim Sang-jeung.

They called for stronger punishment, retrieval of profits and a system to monitor transactions in order to prevent land speculation by public officials.

The revision would also bar officials who work or have worked at housing-related agencies from passing on undisclosed information on state development projects to third party figures.