By Ryu Jin
Staff Reporter
Concerns have re-emerged over the illegal transfer of high technology abroad, which has been worsening in recent years, in the wake of the latest leak case in which industrial spies handed over key automobile building technology of Hyundai Motor to Chinese firms.
Prosecutors Friday arrested two Hyundai Motor employees, who stole core technology for the automatic transmission of a sports utility vehicle (SUV) that the carmaker has developed with an investment of 300 billion won ($323 million) for two years, to a Chinese carmaker.
Identified by surnames Yun and Kim, they sold CDs containing hundreds of drafts of the automatic transmission for the top South Korean carmaker’s SUV ``Santa Fe’’ and those of its popular sedan ``NF Sonata’’ to China’s Jianghuai Automobile Company for 1 billion won.
Kia Motors, a Hyundai Motor affiliate and the country’s second-largest carmaker, detected a similar case in May, when several former employees attempted to leak secret information including key car-assembling technology to a Chinese competitor.
But this week’s case appears to be the first that core auto-making technology has been leaked. Experts estimate the leaked information could cause trillions of won in damages and, more importantly, help China narrow the technology gap with South Korea.
Chinese automakers have constantly demanded their South Korean partners transfer core technology to them, as they have stepped up efforts to create their own brands in order to advance onto the global market.
However, some of the companies, unable to acquire the necessary technology through legal channels, have tried to get them from South Korean firms through illicit ways such as industrial spying.
``Our advanced technologies could be further leaked to China in the future since Chinese carmakers go to enormous lengths to get the necessary information,’’ said an official at a local automaker.
The outflow of confidential technology via industrial spies has so far been concentrated largely on industrial sectors such as shipbuilding, semiconductors and information technology (IT). But the automobile sector is now seen as no exception.
According to the National Intelligence Service (NIS), a total of 124 illegal transfer cases worth some 185.6 trillion won were uncovered before or after the leaks between 2003 and 2007.
``We see the number of cases gradually rising ― from 6 in 2003 to 26 in 2004, 29 in 2005 and 31 in 2006,’’ an NIS official said. ``Most of them involved former or incumbent employees of local companies.’’
Local companies including Hyundai-Kia Group are looking to come up with countermeasures to prevent the technology leaks by tightening the control of their intranets and providing incentives to employees.
Samsung Electronics, for example, has already adopted an advanced security system in its Digital Media Research Center, where each researcher’s location can be traced through satellite-recognized identification cards, in addition to anti-eavesdropping devices.
Experts suggest that the companies also focus on the management of human resources, giving more financial incentives to researchers and other employees and encouraging them to be armed with high-level security awareness even after retirement.