ScholarWorks@숙명여자대학교

초록

With the advent of computers and internet, Korean national security became inexorably linked with the safeguarding of the nation’s trade secrets and critical technological infrastructure. In light of the threat posed by corporate and economic espionage, the National Congress passed the “Prevention and Protection Act on the Leak of Industrial Technologies” (the PPALIT) in 2006. The PPALIT was not the only statute to criminalize the theft of trade secrets. Already in 1991 an “Act on the Prevention of unfair Competition and the Protection of Trade Secrets” was inacted. With their Introduction it seems that the main interest of the reviews and commentaries tended to lie on the corporate crimes. However the protection of general trade secrets can not be sufficiently covered with them. Both Acts have two primary provisions, one is to criminalize domestic economic espionage, and another to criminalize trade secret theft intended to benefit a foreign power. In fact, they contributed to diminish illegal exportation of industrial technologies more and less. The Problem is that they can only be applied to cases which are concerned with industrial technologies as shown in the definition of crimes in the meaning of these Acts. Decade of years was passed since these Acts were enacted. Recently the illegal exportation of Korean companies’ industrial technologies to foreign countries is arisen as an enormous social issue in respect of the interests of Korean government and companies. This article seeks a way to meet the weakness of the existing legal research through focusing mainly on the provisions which criminalize trade secret theft intended to benefit a foreign power. In addition to it, it purposes to evaluate the efficacy of the PPALIT by way of analyzing recent cases of foreign economic espionage in Korea. Finally, this article will show how the protection can be achieved, that is, in way of comparison between the original legislative intention of National Congress, on which the PPALIT is based, and the legal practice on the hacking and cyber espionage.

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