The government says it will comb through property transactions made by public officials in "New Town" areas in Gyeonggi Province as far back as five years from their designation as development sites in search of suspicious activity. 

Choi Chang-won, the head of the joint state investigation team probing the allegations of illicit land purchases by employees of Korea Land and Housing Corporation(LH) and other public officials, said in a meeting with reporters on Monday that investigators will go as far back as December of 2013. 

The first sites for the "New Town" refurbishment projects aimed at increasing housing supplies in the greater Seoul area were announced in 2018. 

The first phase of the investigation - which will aim to trace land purchases driven by insider information used to predict such a designation in advance - will cover some 23-thousand officials, including around 45-hundred at the Land Ministry and 99-hundred at LH. The inquiry would then move on to family members of the officials. 

The examination will begin as a joint team is set to announce this week the preliminary results of its findings into officials at the Land Ministry, public agencies handling land development and regional governments regarding property purchases in third New Town regions.