Three at the table, four in the rules: Seoul court voids trade secret dismissals

The two repairs Company A attempted are the instructive part of the record. Having held the meeting with three members where its own rules set the quorum at four, one seat short ^[14], the company played the recording of the proceedings to the absent member afterwards, then had all four decide on the discipline and its severity ^[5]. The court treated that as a different act from attending: a disciplinary committee exists to give the person facing discipline a chance to present their case, and a member who listens to a tape cannot be said to have sufficiently guaranteed the right to defend oneself ^[11]. The second repair was a lawyer said to be exercising the absent member's delegated authority. The court found insufficient evidence of the delegation, and added that even if it existed, the rules could not readily be read to allow attendance to be handed to a third party ^[12].

The secret ballot reasoning is where the decision does its real work. The rules required an anonymous vote and none was taken ^[6]. The court's ground was counterfactual rather than substantive: without secrecy, members' freedom in decision-making was constrained, and the possibility that they might have decided differently cannot be ruled out ^[13]. Nothing in that test requires showing the outcome was wrong. It only requires that the outcome was not securely arrived at, which is why the company's argument that misconduct this serious made the missing ballot immaterial had nowhere to land ^[10], and why the reported principle is that serious procedural defects void a dismissal whether or not the grounds are established ^[2].

The finding that will travel furthest inside Korean HR departments is the quieter one. Company A argued its disciplinary management rules were not employment rules at all, because they had never been formally announced or registered ^[8]. The court held they were, on the basis that they had been posted in a company-wide regulations folder and were in effect, and that skipping a procedure for hearing employees' views does not by itself invalidate employment rules ^[9]. A manual written to organise management discretion became the yardstick management was measured against.

Count the forums: the Seoul Regional Labor Relations Commission rejected the employees' claim, the National Labor Relations Commission found the dismissals unfair ^[7], and the court in June refused to disturb that ^[1]. One result out of three went the employer's way ^[15]. And on the allegations that started it, the use of company technology and assets to run a competing business and the leaking of trade secrets ^[3], the reported decision records no judicial finding either way ^[16].