South Korean professor who leaked sensitive autonomous vehicle technology in exchange for payments from the Chinese government and other payments amounting to KRW4.5 billion (US$3.28 million) has been sentenced to two years in prison after the Supreme Court of Korea upheld a lower court ruling.
The professor, named only as ‘Lee’ in court proceedings, worked at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). Among the leaked research data were previously unpublished cutting-edge research on LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), which the court ruled was “well worth keeping secret” and which could “serve as a stepping stone for the commercialisation of autonomous driving”.
It also included experimental basic data on the LiDAR, a key sensor that measures the distance between objects using laser beams, and which is considered to be cutting-edge technology protected by Korean law.
On 30 May, the country’s apex court upheld the two-year prison sentence for violating South Korea’s Act on Prevention of Divulgence and Protection of Industrial Technology, among other charges.
The Korea National Intelligence Service had uncovered the irregularities in 2020 and a trial began in September the same year after a prosecutorial investigation. The first trial in 2021 held that the leaked research data had led to a “rapid increase” in the knowledge of the Chinese researchers involved, and Lee was subsequently sentenced in February this year to two years in prison suspended for three years.
Shared with students and professors in China
According to court documents, Lee was indicted on charges of leaking a total of 72 files – these included experimental basic data, experimental and simulation analysis results, and summary data, related to autonomous vehicles – that were uploaded to a cloud server from November 2017 to February 2020 for KAIST researchers to share, and which could also be downloaded by professors and researchers at Chongqing University of Engineering and Technology in China.
Lee had been a professor in the department of electrical and electronics engineering at KAIST since February 1997. From February 2017 he served as co-dean and responsible professor of the Chongqing Liangjiang KAIST International Programme (CLKIP) – an international education cooperation centre using the KAIST education system and curriculum at the Liangjiang Campus of Chongqing University of Engineering and Technology.
In 2017 he was selected as a foreign expert under the Chinese government’s Thousand Talents Plan designed to attract world-class scholars and professors by providing them with high salaries, accommodation and other perks as well as well-funded laboratories to conduct their research in China. His research under the Thousand Talents Plan was halted in July 2020 after he was investigated.
Dozens of researchers in the United States who have taken part in the Chinese talent plan have come under scrutiny in recent years after the US Senate’s homeland security committee said in a report in 2020 that the talent plan endangered US national security by transferring US intellectual property and research to China.
Notably Harvard University chemistry professor Charles Lieber was convicted in April 2023 of lying to US federal investigators of failing to declare his links with the talent plan or pay tax on the payments he received from China.
Lee is the first Korean professor who has taken part in China’s Thousand Talents plan to be investigated and convicted in South Korea.
Court documents show that even after the technology leak was uncovered, Lee refused to submit his Thousand Talents Plan contract to the court.
Fraud and embezzlement
South Korea’s Supreme Court also found Lee guilty of fraud and embezzlement in relation to researcher salaries, and the charge of “obstruction of business” for submitting false documents as part of the process of applying to work overseas concurrently with his work at KAIST.
According to court documents, as director of CLKIP, Lee used the centre’s operating funds to pay fees to researchers conducting research unrelated to CLKIP’s operations, paying outstanding patent fees, paying publication fees for papers presented as part of the Thousand Talents Plan, for equipment purchases for his personal research projects under the Thousand Talents Plan, and for salaries for two research fellows who conducted technology research related to the Thousand Talents Plan.
In addition, he falsely applied to a South Korean national key technologies funding programme, misrepresenting it as changing the research project from sensitive ‘LiDAR research’ to less sensitive ‘LiFi research’ before applying to go to China.
Lee also falsely submitted application documents stating the research project under the Thousand Talents Plan was equivalent to international collaboration when applying to KAIST for overseas trips.
“Lee did not inform KAIST of financial profits he made from research he had conducted under China’s Thousand Talents Plan,” the court said.
In fact, it was confirmed that he had received KRW875 million (US$635,500) from the Chinese government in the form of salary over five years, settlement support, and subsidies, all paid in addition to his salary at KAIST.
According to the court, the professor had been contracted to transfer the rights to nine patents and three papers to Chongqing University of Engineering and Technology in China in return for CNY23.8 million (about KRW4.518 billion) in research grants, expenses, and salary.
‘Obligation to maintain secrecy’
The first trial court ruled in August 2021 that “since this technology falls within the scope of cutting-edge technology protected by law, Lee had an obligation to maintain secrecy” and sentenced him to two years in prison with a three-year suspended sentence, while acquitting him of fraud and obstruction of business.
At that time, the court said that while Lee had an obligation to maintain secrecy of such technology, it suspended the sentence “in consideration of the fact that the scale of personal gain was not large”.
However, the second trial in February this year held that “Lee conducted research under the Thousand Talents Plan and gained financial benefits without prior permission from the president (of KAIST) and did not inform the institute even after that”.
It overturned the original ruling, finding him guilty of all the indictment charges, sentencing him to real imprisonment and remanding him in custody.
Lee appealed this ruling, but the Supreme Court has now dismissed the appeal, saying: “The original ruling was not mistaken in its interpretation of the law related to the crime of violating the Industrial Technology Protection Act and the crime of violating the Unfair Competition Prevention Act”.
During the lower court trial, he also claimed the research data transferred to China was related to ‘LiFi’ (Light Fidelity) and was the result of basic research unrelated to profit, and therefore did not fall under the category of ‘LiDAR’, an industrial technology classified as cutting-edge technology. However, this claim was not accepted.
KAIST authorities dismissed Lee from his position in 2020 though he was not fired.
KAIST has said it will open a disciplinary committee hearing in the wake of the Supreme Court judgement to decide whether Lee should be expelled. KAIST issued a public apology when it was criticised by lawmakers saying that KAIST’s audit office had been “too lenient” about the case after a parliamentary audit of government-funded research institutes in 2020.
KAIST did not respond to requests for comment after the Supreme Court verdict.
University World News
