A state report shows that hacking attempts on the country's arms procurement agency have sharply increased each year.

The Defense Acquisition Program Administration(DAPA) detected 13-thousand-723 hacking attempts against the defense procurement agency from 2019 to August this year, according to its report to Rep. Song Gap-seok of the main opposition Democratic Party on Thursday.

Such hacking attempts have been on the rise from some 25-hundred in 2019 to three-thousand-186 in 2020 and four-thousand-316 in 2021.

The figure is expected to surpass five-thousand this year, with three-thousand-646 attempts already detected until August.

Internet protocol analyses showed that nearly 46-hundred or 33 percent of the hacking attempts were traced to China, followed by the United States, South Korea, India and Britain. 

Song called for the swift establishment of a response system to protect the country's key defense technology from the mounting hacking attempts.