More than 2,000 people have been arrested in a little over three months, during a special investigation into the personal data breaches involving 475 million pieces of data, the South Korean police said Monday.

More than 560 people were accused of collecting personal data illegally via the Internet, about 160 people of leaking the information and almost 70 people of hacking.

Some 2,200 people have been arrested and 164 people have been detained since the end of January.

The police have been working in cooperation with foreign cyber investigation organizations, such as Interpol and the FBI, to fight personal data crime overseas.

Last month, the South Korean police joined forces with the Cambodian police to arrest a 36-year-old man surnamed Lee, who had obtained over 3 million items of personal data by hacking a credit card processing system.

By Suh Ye-seul (sys@heraldcorp.com)