By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter
Source technologies for South Korea’s homegrown portable Internet services, called WiBro, which is short for wireless broadband, were almost illegally sold to companies of another country.
The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office said on Sunday that former and present Posdata researchers attempted to steal WiBro technology to sell to businesses in the United States.
As a system integration subsidiary of the country’s top steel maker, POSCO, Posdata has shelled out big bucks to develop WiBro over the past several years.
``Several former Posdata workers tried to leak WiBro technologies to InQuadron, a firm they established in the U.S. last December,’’ prosecutor Lee Je-yeong said.
``They set up a Korean office of InQuadron in Bundang, Gyeonggi Province, where Posdata’s head office is situated, to collect WiBro technology,’’ he said.
However, they failed to take the stolen technology to the InQuadron head office in Silicon Valley, Lee said. The prosecution has already indicted four suspects and is seeks to prosecute three more.
``They tried to entice 20 or more Posdata workers to steal all the source technology of WiBro. Then, they hoped to earn 180 billion won by selling InQuadron to a U.S. telecom firm,’’ Lee said.
``Posdata estimates damages could be up to 15 trillion won should the technology be leaked to a U.S. company. This seems to be the biggest attempt of high-tech leakage in Korea,’’ he said.
Lee said the suspects had committed the crime felonies after failing to get promotions at a time they wanted.
WiBro enables people on the road to remain connected to the Internet at the speed of fixed-line broadband.
Samsung Elecronics, the world's third-largest cell phone maker, has spent about 500 billion won to develop the go-anywhere Internet platform while Posdata also contributed 90 billion won.
KT, Korea's top telecom operator, and SK Telecom, business bellwether in the mobile telephony services, commercially launched WiBro last year in Korea.
A total of five countries _ the U.S., Denmark, Australia and the Netherlands as well as Korea _ are commercially using the Internet-on-the-move services and 11 more plan to do so in the near future.