South Korea began enforcing a rewritten espionage law on Sunday, a change aimed at protecting advanced chip technology from theft by foreign governments and their agents.
The revised Criminal Act adds a new provision, Article 98-2, that punishes anyone who detects, collects, leaks, delivers or brokers national secrets for a foreign country or an equivalent organisation. Previously the espionage offence covered only acts committed for an enemy state, which in practice meant North Korea. Convictions under the new article carry a minimum prison term of three years, and courts can hand down sentences of up to 30 years.
Why memory chips are the target
The National Assembly passed the amendment on February 26 after a filibuster by the opposition, making it the first major overhaul of the espionage statute in 73 years. Lawmakers and industry groups had warned that the old wording left a gap, because leaking technology to a commercial rival abroad was treated as a corporate dispute rather than a national security matter.
Police data supports that concern. Investigators detected a record 33 industrial technology theft cases last year, and more than half of them involved China. Semiconductors were the most frequently targeted industry, followed by displays and batteries. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix together dominate the global market for high-bandwidth memory, the component that sits beside AI accelerators in data centres.
Exporters fear a chill
The change also worries South Korean defence and equipment exporters, who say ordinary dealings with overseas customers could now look risky to employees unsure where the line sits. Industry groups have asked the government for clear guidance on what counts as a national secret and how routine technical support is treated. Officials say they will publish interpretation guidelines and train compliance teams.
A separate bill would go further by naming foreign corporations explicitly as a criminal purpose and setting a mandatory minimum of ten years for leaking national core technology. That proposal is still moving through the assembly.
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