Officer arrested for selling personal data pulled from police database

A serving police officer has been arrested on suspicion of leaking personal data extracted from the police's internal network to outside parties.

The wide-area crime investigation unit of the Gyeonggi Northern Police Agency said Saturday it had apprehended an officer, identified only as A, on charges of violating the Personal Information Protection Act and was questioning him.

A is suspected of accepting a request in July to pull personal data from the police's internal network and leaking it to an outside party in exchange for payment.

Police arrested A on Friday and are pressing him on the number of times data was leaked and the total amount of money he received.

Investigators also plan to summon for questioning the person who paid A to obtain the personal information.

The Gyeonggi Northern Police Agency recently detained two officers — one from its jurisdiction and one from South Gyeongsang Province — on charges of leaking personal data obtained from the internal network, and separately detained a private investigator on charges of illegally acquiring personal information.