ISTANBUL

South Korea’s military blocked more than 9,200 cyberattacks in the first half of 2025, marking a nearly 45% increase from the same period previous year, local media reported on Sunday.

According to data provided to the Korea Herald Sunday by the office of Rep. Yu Yong-weon of the main opposition People Power Party, 9,193 attacks targeted official military homepages, and 69 were email hacks.

The South Korean military said “all cyberattacks were blocked and that no damage was inflicted,” according to Yu's office.

Cyberattack attempts against the military were 6,146 in 2021, 4,943 in 2022, 6,805 in 2023, and 6,401 in 2024. This year’s total surged by 44.7% compared to 2024.

South Korea’s Cyber Operations Command informed Yu's office that many of the attacks were attributed to North Korea.

“We cannot precisely identify the actors behind the cyber intrusion attempts, but it is presumed that the majority were conducted by North Korea in light of correlations between the countries where the routing IP addresses are located and the IPs used for intrusion attempts,” the command said without providing further details.

Yu highlighted that the "fact that cyber intrusions targeting our military’s internet network marked an all-time high is actually a grave warning sign.”

He warned that "only one intrusion of the military network can cause fatal damage to the command-and-control system as well as critical information assets."

He urged the military to improve its security system, conduct regular cyber exercises, and enhance officer training to address these threats.