A military court has issued a pretrial detention warrant for a civilian employee in the Army who is accused of leaking data on a number of offshore agents tasked with espionage activity related to North Korea. 

The defense ministry said the Court-martial of the Central Region in Seoul issued the warrant on Tuesday for the employee of the Army’s Korea Defense Intelligence Command(KDIC). 

The move comes after military prosecutors sought the warrant at the request of the Defense Counterintelligence Command, which is probing the civilian employee. 

The employee, who used to be a soldier, is suspected of leaking up to thousands of data on offshore agents of the KDIC, mostly those who conduct espionage operations related to North Korea.

Military authorities are said to have come across signs that some of the information was leaked to the North. 

Authorities have so far determined that the data, stored in the employee’s laptop, were leaked via various channels. 

The employee is claiming that his laptop was hacked, but authorities say such a possibility is highly unlikely.