A special industrial espionage law to protect knowledge security

Park Se-hyun

The author is the president of Chung-Ang University.

A retired Chinese People’s Liberation Army soldier was recently arrested on suspicion of illegally intercepting communications between fighter pilots and an air traffic control tower from a hotel near Gunsan Airport in North Jeolla. Such crimes are difficult to detect because victims rarely realize they are being monitored and the necessary equipment is readily available. Meticulous intelligence gathering and tracking by the National Intelligence Service, however, played a decisive role in the arrest. Counterintelligence is precisely this national capacity to detect small signs in everyday life, connect scattered information and identify the larger threat.

We must now broaden our understanding of national security. Traditional territorial and military security remain central to national survival, but in an era when advanced technology determines national competitiveness, technologies, talent and data in strategic industries such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence and quantum technology are also vital security assets. A leak of core technology can damage not just one company but years of research and development and an entire industrial ecosystem. Economic counterintelligence and industrial security must therefore be treated as central pillars of national security.

This shift is global. The United States enacted the “Economic Espionage Act” in 1996, making economic espionage benefiting foreign governments and theft of trade secrets federal crimes. The European Union adopted its Trade Secrets Directive to protect technology and information accumulated by companies and research institutions as essential assets for innovation and competitiveness. Protecting knowledge now means protecting national competitiveness. Protection must extend beyond corporate blueprints to research produced at universities and institutes, key personnel and data stored in the cloud.

Universities are open knowledge communities where researchers and companies from around the world meet, but they are also on the front line of economic security. Information can be extracted not only through hacking but under legitimate-looking arrangements such as joint research, investment, recruitment and academic exchanges. This is why Chung-Ang University established a Department of Industrial Security early on, training interdisciplinary specialists in technology protection, or research security, information security and criminal investigation. Industrial security goes beyond physical controls. It is a comprehensive discipline that determines what information is nationally important, diagnoses vulnerabilities in people and organizations and prevents incidents.

Universities and research institutes must cultivate such field-ready specialists and develop systems for detecting signs of technology leakage early. Training for researchers must also become practical enough to help them recognize and respond to risks themselves.

Institutional gaps must also be closed. A recently implemented revision to the Criminal Act expanded the scope of espionage offenses from acts benefiting an “enemy state” to those benefiting a “foreign country or equivalent organization,” an important advance. Yet advanced technology theft today is often backed not directly by foreign governments but by well-funded foreign companies and other private actors. Existing espionage provisions alone cannot adequately address such cases.

To close that gap, a special bill providing heavier punishment for industrial espionage has been introduced in the National Assembly. Its premise is that technology leakage should be treated not simply as an infringement of corporate property rights but as a threat to national technological sovereignty and economic security. It would enable tougher responses when private actors, as well as foreign governments, are behind technology theft. This is a necessary shift in the security paradigm amid intensifying competition for technological supremacy.

Legislation alone, of course, cannot solve every problem. Building on the NIS’s accumulated expertise in preventing overseas leaks of advanced technology, investigative agencies must improve intelligence sharing and public-private cooperation. Universities and research institutes must also become sensors for knowledge security, recognizing the value of technology at the research site and detecting early warning signs. Researchers themselves should not be merely objects of protection but active participants in safeguarding technological sovereignty.

In an era of technological competition, knowledge is national power, and the ability to protect knowledge is national competitiveness. Korea must protect its technology, talent and data without undermining the dynamism of open knowledge communities.

When interdisciplinary expertise in the field, university research and education and supporting laws and institutions work together, Korea’s economic security ecosystem will become stronger. The National Assembly should swiftly pass the special legislation needed to safeguard the country’s technological sovereignty in this critical era.