Korea doubles its tech-leak squads: 79 officers, and a bigger compliance problem for R&D sites

South Korea's National Police Agency is putting 79 more officers into units that investigate the overseas leakage of key national technologies, a list that runs from semiconductors and artificial intelligence to secondary batteries and defense industry technology ^[1]. The dedicated investigative units at the Seoul and Gyeonggi Nambu (southern Gyeonggi) agencies, where cases cluster, go from one team each to two, with teams assigned to specific technology fields ^[2].

The framing matters as much as the headcount. Police say the reallocation reflects a view that tech leak crimes have outgrown the category of harm to an individual company and now threaten national industrial competitiveness and economic security ^[4]. The Security Investigation Bureau of the National Office of Investigation said on the 20th that the 79 officers come from reassigning existing personnel ^[3], which makes this a priority shift inside a fixed force rather than a hiring round. Placement will follow recent case-handling results and regional investigative demand ^[5], concentrated in the Seoul metropolitan area, where large-company headquarters and R&D staff sit, and in defense, semiconductor and battery clusters ^[6].

The caseload supports the reweighting. Last year police uncovered 179 cases, eight of them involving national core technologies, and arrested 378 people ^[7], up from 123 cases and 267 people in 2024, increases of 45.5% and 41.5% ^[8]. Thirty-three of last year's cases involved leaks abroad ^[9], about 18% of the total ^[10]. Through July this year, 144 people were arrested across 68 cases, with the case count flat against the same period a year earlier ^[11]. Arrests per case have held at roughly two in both periods ^[12].

For operators, the composition is the useful part. Insiders were the source in 60 of the 68 cases this year, against eight involving outsiders ^[13] - about 88% internal ^[14]. Small and mid-sized firms and others accounted for 59 cases, versus nine at large companies ^[13], so the exposure is heaviest where security budgets are thinnest ^[14]. By sector through July, machinery led with nine cases, semiconductors and the automotive and railway sector had six each (two of the semiconductor cases involving leaks abroad), electrical and electronics four, and shipbuilding and information and communications three each ^[15]. Those named categories cover 31 of the 68 cases ^[16]. Where the destination country was confirmed, China was the most common, with four ^[17].

Two operational details raise the compliance stakes. First, police say these cases need expert judgment on whether leaked technology is identical to the original, whether it is genuinely non-public, and what its economic value is, and that the damage often never surfaces on its own ^[18]. That is effectively a documentation test: a company that cannot show what it classified as non-public, when, and why, is a company whose loss may be unprovable. Second, provincial agencies will designate industrial security liaison officers to advise companies, universities and research institutes ^[19], and police will strengthen a system to convert criminal intelligence picked up during damage reports and consultations straight into investigations ^[20]. An advisory conversation is also an intake channel.

Police also plan deeper technology assessment and information sharing with the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, the Korea Intellectual Property Office and the National Intelligence Service, plus more training by technology field ^[21]. Investigations already tend to run long because of vast digital evidence and the need for cooperation with domestic and overseas agencies ^[22].

Watch the second half. Case volume was flat through July while capacity doubles in the two busiest jurisdictions; if the count rises without a change in underlying behaviour, the driver is detection, not deterioration.