Industrial Spying Threatens Local Firms
By Ryu Jin
Staff Reporter
Concerns have re-emerged over the illegal transfers of high level technology abroad, which have increased in recent years, in the wake of the latest leak case that showed industrial spies had tried to sell key auto-making technologies of Kia Motors to Chinese firms.
In March, a Samsung Electronics researcher was arrested on charges of setting up a joint venture with a telecommunications firm in Kazakhstan and attempting to leak sophisticated mobile phone technologies to it.
In 2004, a former researcher at Hynix Semiconductor was also indicted right before transferring core technologies to a U.S. company which he was about to join.
According to the National Intelligence Service (NIS) on Friday, a total of 96 illegal transfers worth some 95.9 trillion won ($103.5 billion) have been disclosed from 2003 to April 2007. Such cases rose from six in 2003 to 26 in 2004, 29 in 2005 and 31 in 2006.
Killing Local Industries
On Thursday, nine former and incumbent employees of Kia Motors, South Korea's No. 2 automaker, were indicted on charges of illegally transferring key carmaking technologies to China.
The outflow of confidential technologies via industrial spies has so far been concentrated on the country's core industries such as semiconductors and information technology (IT) sectors. But this was the first such case in the automobile industry that has ever been brought to light.
Prosecutors said the nine people allegedly delivered 57 kinds of secret information including a key car-assembling technology via e-mail to a local consulting firm established by some of Kia's former workers from last November until recently.
Leaked technologies were then transferred to a Chinese automaker for payments of some 230 million won ($248,000) and were about to be handed over to another Chinese automaker, according to prosecutors.
Damages from the alleged leak are generally believed to reach several trillion won and will result in narrowing the auto-making technology gap between South Korea and China from the current three years to one and a half years by 2010.
Kia Motors officials, however, say it will suffer bigger losses, probably 22.3 trillion won in the global car market over the next three years, if the allegations are found to be true.
Experts warn that South Korea's advanced technologies in the automobile industry could be further leaked to China since the Chinese carmakers would ``go through fire and water'' in order to acquire them.
Countermeasures
Local companies, including Kia and its parent Hyundai Motor, are looking to come up with countermeasures to prevent the technology leak, tightening the control of their intranet.
Samsung Electronics 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. Other companies are also using fluoroscopic apparatus and anti-eavesdropping devices.
Experts, however, 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 a high-level security awareness even after retirement.