Some international students drop out, and then walk out — with confidential research

A Chinese graduate student working at a university laboratory in Daejeon abruptly quit and left Korea last year. Suspicious of the student's sudden departure, the professor and fellow researchers discovered that the student had copied the source code of a jointly developed program onto an external hard drive before leaving.

The professor later persuaded the student to return to Korea by saying “there is unpaid research funding that needs to be settled.” Once the student arrived in Korea, the professor filed a criminal complaint. The student is now under police investigation.

In a similar case, a Vietnamese graduate student researching EV battery technology at a university laboratory in Seoul suddenly withdrew from school in 2023 and moved to Taiwan, where the student joined a research institute conducting similar work.

When the Vietnamese student later returned to Korea, police found that research materials had been copied through a cloud storage service. The student was referred to prosecutors on charges of violating the Act on Prevention of Divulgence and Protection of Industrial Technology.

Behind the cases lies a simple but sobering reality: Many Korean universities lack even basic research security measures.

As foreign student enrollment rises and international research collaboration expands, concern has likewise grown that valuable research developed at Korean universities and institutes is being taken overseas illegally. Technologies critical to Korea's competitiveness, such as semiconductors and batteries, are seen as the main targets.

To close the gaps, experts are calling for nationwide research security standards and increased government funding. 

At present, however, institutional safeguards to prevent research theft are largely minimal. Graduate laboratories in fields such as AI and semiconductors are typically run as collaborative research groups, with members freely sharing source code, datasets and other research materials.

Further, at most universities, the only security measure is a confidentiality agreement that graduate students sign when they enroll or join a laboratory. Most universities have no formal procedures governing the removal of research materials, the recovery of files when researchers leave or the termination of system access.

“Universities cannot easily use virtual private networks that companies use, so most researchers share materials through cloud services that are easy to access,” an anonymous engineering professor at a national university said. “As a result, we're seeing more cases in which international students or overseas research partners take research results with them.”

Another problem is that research leaks are often neither detected nor reported in a timely manner.

“Professors and universities often hesitate to report when information is leaked from a government-funded or industry-sponsored research project, or when a graduate student is responsible for the leak because they fear reputational damage or being held accountable,” said another anonymous professor at a private university in Seoul. “There is a culture of reluctance to report such incidents.”

Sometimes, it’s the researchers themselves who leak the information, even without realizing it.

When researchers provide paid consulting services, they often fail to recognize that disclosing research materials during those consultations constitutes a research leak, according to a police official who has investigated technology leakage cases.

Meanwhile, the number of international students participating in research at Korean universities and research institutes continues to grow. Korea hosted about 253,000 international students last year. The number of international graduate students more than doubled over the past decade, from 24,160 in 2016 to 59,040 last year.

Other countries with advanced research sectors have already introduced strict safeguards against research theft.

The United States adopted National Security Presidential Memorandum 33 in 2021. The policy requires institutions receiving federal research funding to designate research security officers, provide research security training and conduct security reviews and monitoring before overseas travel.

Japan has also required universities to operate voluntary research security compliance programs since 2022. 

Korea, by contrast, only began providing government support for research security this year, and only eight schools are receiving help to strengthen safeguards against the unauthorized disclosure or transfer of sensitive research.

Overall, Korea has about 50 research-intensive universities with active master's and doctoral programs in science and engineering. Of these, only two — KAIST and Chung-Ang University — have established dedicated research security centers.

As a result, experts say many universities remain exposed to security vulnerabilities.

“We urgently need standardized research security guidelines that can be applied across university laboratories while preserving universities' research autonomy, as well as coordinated support at the government level,” said Chang Hang-bae, a professor of industrial security at Chung-Ang University.

BY LEE BO-RAM, LEE HOO-YEON [[email protected]]