South Korea vows to prevent technology leaks with heavier penalties

South Korea will prepare stronger measures in a bid to prevent overseas leaks of business secrets amid intensifying competition for advanced technologies, the finance minister said on Thursday.

"We will prevent illegal leaks of advanced technologies to raise the global competitiveness of our companies and strengthen technology leadership," Minister Choi Sang-mok said.

The government will set up a "big data" system aimed at preventing technology leaks at the patent agency and introduce new regulations to ensure stronger punishment for culprits, Choi said. He did not specify what the stronger penalties would be under the new regulations.

In the past five years, there have been 97 attempts to leak business secrets to a foreign country, with 40 of them in the semiconductor industry, according to the National Intelligence Service.

If successful, they would have resulted in a total loss to the country of around 23 trillion won ($16.85 billion), the spy agency estimates.

Last month, a South Korean executive accused of stealing semiconductor information developed by Samsung Electronics was detained again on fresh allegations related to the theft of chip processing technology.

South Korea in recent years has designated a total of 12 industries as "national strategic technologies" with targeted financial support and protection to respond to intensifying global competition and fragmentation of supply chains.

They include industries such as semiconductors, rechargeable batteries, aerospace and artificial intelligence, among others.