Expert Calls for South Korea to Strengthen Intellectual Property Protection Against China Theft

Beijing’s Thousand Talents program is a front for Chinese industrial espionage

South Korea and China's flags flutter next to Tiananmen Gate in Beijing on Dec. 15, 2017. Jason Lee/Reuters

In recent years, Beijing’s efforts of technology theft were exposed one after another, primarily through its talent acquisition program called the “Thousand Talents Plan.” Many of those involved in the scheme, Chinese or foreigners, were subjected to legal consequences in the victimized countries.

However, analysts believe South Korea, in particular, has long lacked vigilance in preventing technology theft.

Just as the government announced on June 7 that it would toughen punishment for technology theft, a case was reported that same day.

The Seoul Police Department said they arrested a researcher of Chinese descent on charges of stealing about 10,000 files of advanced medical robot technology while operating in South Korea.

The accused, “Mr. A,” whose real name was not disclosed by the authorities, was charged with violating the Unfair Competition Prevention Act, according to Korean prosecutors.

Mr. A allegedly stole the data during his work at a research institute affiliated with a large hospital in Seoul from 2015 to 2020 and leaked them to China. The stolen files include technologies such as a cardiovascular intervention surgery assistance robot.

South Korean police revealed that Mr. A stole and leaked the core data for medical robot technology to China. The technology is reportedly about to be commercialized and has a market value of more than 600 billion won (about $4.7 billion). The Korean government reportedly invested 10 billion won (about $7.8 million) in its development.

Mr. A was reported to have worked at hospitals and robotics-related research institutes for more than 10 years. He was arrested at Incheon International Airport in March during his reentry. The police had also imposed a travel ban and initiated a non-custodial investigation into Mr. A, local media reported.

One report said the data leaked by Mr. A is not part of  South Korea’s national core technology, so the Industrial Technology Protection Act likely won’t apply. Therefore, his punishment will not be severe if only found guilty of violating the Unfair Competition Prevention Act.

This wanted poster is displayed at the Justice Department in Washington on May 19, 2014. Then-Attorney General Eric Holder announced that a U.S. grand jury charged five Chinese hackers with economic espionage and trade secret theft, the first-of-its-kind criminal charges against Chinese military officials in an international cyber-espionage case. AP Photo

China’s Thousand Talents Plan

The authorities found that Mr. A was part of the Chinese regime’s Thousand Talents Plan (TTP) and reportedly received subsidies from Beijing. This program offers up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in incentives for overseas professionals to research and work in China for some time each year. It is widely criticized as a front for mass-producing Chinese industrial espionage.

The Korean intelligence authorities said they “suspected that Mr. A came to South Korea intending to steal the technology [and leak it] to China.”

This was not the first case of technology theft in South Korea related to the TTP program.

In 2020, a professor from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) was arrested and tried for charges of leaking research data related to Lidar, a technology used in autonomous driving vehicles. Lidar is known as the “eye of autonomous driving” and is the core technology of self-driving cars. The professor was found to have participated in the TTP and received about 3.3 billion won (about $2.5 million) in funding from Beijing.

The professor was later sentenced to two years in prison with a three-year suspended sentence.

Average of 1.6 Tech Leaks per Month

South Korea experiences frequent technology leakages, accompanied by massive losses.

According to data from the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI) released on June 8, citing the Korean National Intelligence Service, at least 93 technologies have leaked overseas over the past five years, with an average of 1.6 leaks per month, mostly from critical industries such as semiconductors, rechargeable batteries, and autonomous vehicles.

The FKI on Oct. 27, 2022, released a survey it conducted on 26 industry security experts. About 85 percent of the respondents said the level of South Korea’s protection of its advanced technology was weaker than that of the United States, while the country’s research and development capabilities are on par with its rival nations.

Based on the experts’ estimates, the report said the average annual damage caused by industrial technology leaks, including overseas leaks, is about $40 billion, equivalent to 2.7 percent of South Korea’s GDP in 2021 and 60.4 percent of the country’s total R&D expenditure in 2020.

Meanwhile, 92.3 percent of the experts believe that China is the country that South Korea should be most wary of regarding leaks.

‘Punishment Is Too Light’

The South Korean government has been criticized for its light punishment of technology leaks.

FKI data shows that in 2021, there were 33 first-instance criminal trials for violating the Industrial Technology Protection Act, of which 60.6 percent were acquitted, 27.2 percent were sentenced to probation, and 6.1 percent received prison sentences.

The FKI pointed out that although South Korea has stipulated penalties for crimes regarding intellectual property theft, the actual punishment is insufficient because the sentencing standards are lower than the statutory penalties.

“It is necessary to raise the sentencing standards and establish different sentencing standards for the leakage of national core technologies and general commercial secrets,” FKI said in the report.

Lee Yuanhua, a China expert and former associate professor of history education at China’s Capital Normal University, echoed the FKI’s assessment.

“The reason why South Korean technologies are frequently stolen by the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] is that the punishment is too light,” Lee told The Epoch Times on June 9, adding that the country’s laws and regulations for technology protection are lax.

However, he emphasized that Beijing’s frequent success in stealing South Korean technologies shows that “Korea does not truly understand the nature of the CCP and lacks vigilance” against those with CCP-affiliated backgrounds operating in South Korea.

He also pointed out that because China is South Korea’s largest trading partner, South Korea has always prioritized its economy and ignored the issue of technology theft.

“Technology theft prevention is lax, and the punishment is inconsequential compared to the huge profits gained. This makes thieving all the more rampant,” Lee added.

However, according to a JoongAng Daily report in May, the Yoon Suk-yeol government plans to start a large-scale crackdown on industrial espionage in the near future.

“Amid the fierce technology competition, South Korea’s core technology continues to leak to places like China, but the previous government has always taken painless punishment measures. President Yoon realized the seriousness of the problem ... will begin [working on] the sentencing standards in the near future,” an unnamed aide in the Korean presidential office reportedly told the newspaper.

Kane Zhang contributed to this report.