South Korea is tightening its defenses against industrial espionage with a revised law on spying taking effect this weekend, as the home of global chip giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix seeks to safeguard advanced memory technology from increasingly formidable Chinese rivals. South Korea has imposed increasingly harsh penalties in recent years on former chip-industry employees caught leaking trade secrets overseas. But courts have long been constrained by the country’s narrow definition of espionage, which applied only to those proven to be spying for nuclear-armed rival North Korea.
That will change Sunday, when sweeping changes to legislation will allow courts to sentence people who pass sensitive technology to any “foreign country or an organization equivalent thereto” to up to 30 years in prison. The shift effectively elevates the theft of industrial secrets from a corporate offense to a national-security threat, reflecting how central semiconductors have become to South Korea’s economy and strategic power.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
