Over 600 hacking attempts against South Korea's unification ministry were detected last year, government data showed Wednesday.

According to the data released by the ministry, 633 cyber attacks against the ministry were detected last year, including 46 hacking attempts through the website.

The number of cyber attacks against the ministry, which stood at 336 in 2017, jumped to 630 in 2018 and to 767 in 2019 and slightly fell to 633 last year.

Web hacking attempts against the ministry increased from one in 2018 to 11 in 2019 and jumped to 46 last year, the data showed.

"We cannot confirm that they are hacking attempts by North Korea," a ministry official told reporters. (Yonhap)