Korea's industrial technology in the 1970s and 1980s was understood as a "Eating and living" concept to increase exports, but today, it is resulting in a "death and living" problem at stake in order to prevent and protect the leakage of technology. Al...
Korea's industrial technology in the 1970s and 1980s was understood as a "Eating and living" concept to increase exports, but today, it is resulting in a "death and living" problem at stake in order to prevent and protect the leakage of technology. Also as the existing security concept, which has been staying at the military level, has recently expanded and transformed into the concept of "economic security," security strategies in major countries around the world are rapidly reorganizing around high-tech science and technology with economic security as the top priority. Namely, in the past, geopolitics influenced the rise and fall of a country through geographical location relations, today is a techno-political era in which the whole is determined by which country occupies advanced science and technology and is at the center of the international order.
Accordingly, major countries such as the United States, China, and Japan are making national efforts to secure high-tech technologies to maintain and acquire economic hegemony, and Korea is also paying a lot of attention to fostering science and technology and securing high-tech through various legislation. Recently, the 「National Advanced Strategic Industry Act」 and the 「National Special Act on the Promotion of Strategic Technology」 were enacted as economic security-related bills, the 「Act on Special Measures to Strengthen Competitiveness of Materials, Parts, and Equipment Industries」 and related legislation by each ministry are also actively enacted and revised to cope with supply chain disruptions, the National Assembly is also actively discussing the "Basic Act on Supply Chain Stabilization Support for Economic Security (hereinafter referred to as the "Basic Act on Supply Chain") and the "Special Act on National Resource Security (hereinafter referred to as the Special Act on Resource Security.")
Despite the full-fledged era of technological hegemony in which a country's technology determines national competitiveness, Korea's overseas outflow of "national core technologies" continues to increase. In particular, a total of 117 industrial technology leaks were detected over the past six years from 2017 to 2022, of which 36 were leaked overseas of national core technologies, during this period, the amount of damage caused by technology leakage is estimated to be about 26 trillion won, putting a considerable burden on the national economy. Accordingly, this study defined important industrial technologies, including national core technologies, as key factors that determine national security and future national competitiveness, and focused on ways to prevent leakage and strengthen protection of national important industrial technologies.
In this study, ‘national important industrial technology' is not a term used in law, nor is it a term commonly used in academia. In a situation where laws and technologies related to industrial technology are mixed by institution, ① in particular, "industrial technology" and "national core technology" under the 「Industrial Technology Protection Act」, which are closely related to economic security, ② "Defense Industry Technology" under the 「Defense Industry Technology Protection Act」, ③ "National Advanced Strategic Technology" under the 「National Advanced Strategic Industry Act」, ④ "National Strategic Technology" and "Detailed Focus Technology" under the 「Special Act on the Promotion of National Strategic Technology」, ⑤ "Core strategic technology" under the 「Act on Special Measures to Strengthen Competitiveness of Materials, Parts, and Equipment Industries」, ⑥ "Strategic Technology" under the 「Foreign Trade Act」, ⑦ “Trade secrets” under the 「Unfair Competition Prevention Act」 etc, it was called "important industrial technology" because there was no clear concept encompassing the above numerous technologies, and it is stated in advance that it is a policy view and personal opinion classified and defined based on my investigative experience and legal knowledge.
First of all, in order to help understand ‘national important industrial technologies', the purpose and details of each law and technology were explained in detail, and the entire designated technology was clearly summarized, furthermore, similarities and differences in the details of each technology were compared and schematized. In addition, the types of leakage of "national important industrial technologies" that are becoming more intelligent and diversified day by day are ① ‘Recruitment of key technology personnel’ ② ‘Purchase of corporate insiders’ ③ ‘Information Broker’ ④‘Industrial Spy Gastrointestinal Infiltration’ ⑤ ‘Computer Hacking’ ⑥ ‘Transmission Data Interception’ ⑦ ‘Unauthorized intrusion’ ⑧ Third party buyout ⑨ ‘Mergers and Acquisitions’ etc, each method was largely classified into nine categories, and each method was reviewed, and punishment laws and application laws were reviewed in detail.
The leakage of "national important industrial technology" is not a matter of national wealth leakage, but an issue that must be approached from the perspective of economic security that determines the success or failure of the country, it is most important to prepare an "organization" and "legislation" to prevent the leakage of important industrial technologies. Accordingly, it suggested the need to establish an Economic Security Control Tower (Tentative name, Economic Security Committee) that can integrate and manage statistics and data managed by ministries and enact the "Act on the Prevention of Leakage of Important Industrial Technologies (Tentative name, Basic Act on Economic Security). In addition, it was proposed to establish a "HUB" role system that guarantees the expertise and efficiency of the investigation by designating and expanding the "focused investigation office" by specialized field.
Meanwhile, Taiwan, which owns TSMC, the world's largest semiconductor producer, legislated its "high-tech industry protection" on June 2022, punishing technology leakage crimes as "spying". The crime of espionage has traditionally been applied to the military and political sectors, but through the revision of the 「Economic Safety Act」, the leakage of technology in the economic sector was also defined as a 'spying act', which has many implications for Korea. The United States, a traditional technology powerhouse, is a ‘no tolerance principle’ for foreign leaks of national core technologies, with a maximum legal sentence of 20 years in prison and a maximum penalty of $5 million (about 6.5 billion won), Taiwan is also sentenced to 12 years in prison and up to $100 million (about 4.2 billion won) in fines, which are difficult to compare with Korea's current legislation. Accordingly, Korea also established a "crime of economic espionage" within the aforementioned Framework Act on Economic Security and proposed specific sentence regulations corresponding to the crimes of economic espionage in the United States and Taiwan for overseas leakage of "national core technology" and "national advanced strategic technology."
As a measure to strengthen the protection of 'national important industrial technology', it was divided into operational and institutional aspects. First, a more systematic and specialized curriculum was presented to foster professional manpower in industrial technology leakage investigation as a way to strengthen protection in operational aspect. As a characteristic of industrial technology leakage crimes, a high degree of expertise in judging illegality is required, In addition, technology leakage means should be digitized (dark web, cloud server, etc.) and professional IT technologies (forensics, encryption and decryption techniques, etc.) should be accompanied to secure evidence and prove the charges, in particular, a clear understanding of each legal purpose should precede the mixture of laws and technologies related to industrial technology. Therefore, through an in-depth analysis of the detailed items of the industrial security education curriculum and cases of domestic and foreign universities, and graduate schools, in the meantime, it has proposed a convergence and complex educational program that integrates learning and practice to foster professional skills in industrial technology leakage and foster practical skills, breaking away from standardized theoretical education such as simple concept understanding and introduction of investigative cases.
As a measure to strengthen protection from an institutional perspective, the introduction of a technology valuation system was suggested for the investigation of industrial technology leakage. The technology value evaluation system actively reflects the position and pain of the victim company on the importance and property value of the technology leaked by experts in the investigation of industrial technology leakage in criminal procedures (arrest, sentence, etc.), the purpose of the court is also to induce more strict sentences based on the results of the technology valuation, taking into account the reasons for sentencing. In addition, the "Police Science Institute" affiliated with the National Police University proposed the establishment of the "Industrial Technology Value Evaluation Center" (tentative name) in preparation for the promotion of the "National Institute of Security Science." Through this, it is expected to actively contribute to preventing the leakage of "national important industrial technology" and strengthening protection in institutional aspects by developing standards and methods for accurately calculating the amount of damage in the police's leak investigation of "national important industrial technology" and establishing a continuous cooperation system with specialized institutions such as "Technology Guarantee Fund".
In addition, to prevent and protect the leakage of national important industrial technologies, to listen to the voices of the field in charge of investigation work on the front line, 83 out of 106 investigators of the Industrial Technology Protection Investigation Team of 18 municipal and provincial police departments nationwide, including the main office, 79 out of 142 security investigation teams of 57 police stations nationwide, and 162 were surveyed. As for the survey method, a mixed research method using a quantitative research method through a survey and a qualitative research method that extracts important elements through suggestions among the survey participants were used, through this, it was intended to overcome the limitations of quantitative research that are difficult to obtain internal validity and to obtain the validity of the research results. In addition, through various analyses of the survey results, significant results were derived on the problems and improvement measures of the current system.
This study compiled the details of Korea's national important industrial technologies related to economic security, which have recently become a hot topic around the world, and the schematic and designated technologies through mutual comparison analysis between technologies, in particular, it focused on presenting more realistic and feasible protection measures for national important industrial technologies, above all, it is judged to be distinctly original and differentiated from existing studies in that it reflects the vivid voice of the field in charge of investigating important industrial technologies.
The author of this study is not only investigators of the Industrial Technology Protection Team of the Security Investigation Unit and the Security Investigation Team of the Police Station, who are in charge of investigating the leakage of important industrial technologies related to economic security, special judicial police officers from related agencies (National Intelligence Service · Defense Counterintelligence Command · Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy · Ministry of SMEs and Startups · Patent Office, etc.) are also expected to be used as 'basic data' and serve as 'guidelines'.
keywords : Economic Security, National Important Industrial Technology, Prevention and Protection of leaks, Educational Curriculum, Technology Value Evaluation.
Student Number : 20203302