Two officials connected with South Korea's state-run Korea Development Bank (KDB) have been detained over a graft probe into the Hyundai Motor company, prosecutors said.

A Hyundai model at the Busan car show.[AFP]

Park Sang-Bae, a former vice governor of the state-run bank and Lee Seong-Geun, president of KDB Capital Corp., the bank's venture capital unit, were arrested overnight and are being held pending trial, they said.

Park allegedly received 1.5 billion won (1.6 million dollars) and Lee 100 million won in kickbacks from Hyundai Motor for helping the country's number one automaker get a debt write-off worth some 20 billion won.

Their arrest brought the number of those arrested in the scandal to at least eight, including Hyundai Motor Group head Chung Mong-Koo, detained on April 28 on charges of embezzlement and breach of trust.

Chung is charged with raising about 130 billion won of slush funds through the group's affiliates since 2001.

The 68-year-old chairman was also charged with causing 390 billion won in losses to the country's second largest business group.