The Supreme Court has raised the maximum jail term recommended for those convicted of leaking state-designated key technologies overseas to 18 years amid a growing number of trade secret theft cases, officials said Friday. The top court's sentencing committee revised the sentencing guidelines on industrial secret theft during its meeting the previous day, the officials said. Under the revised guidelines, the standard sentence for those convicted of leaking state-designated technologies overseas has been revised up to three to seven years in prison, with up to 12 years of imprisonment recommended for aggravated cases. The maximum ceiling for such crimes has been upgraded to 18 years in prison for cases where special aggravating factors for sentencing outnumber mitigating elements by two or more. The current standard sentence for the theft of state-designated key technologies is one to 3 1/2 years in prison. The new guidelines also included a recommendation that judges refrain from delivering a suspended jail term for technology thieves. The revision came as South Korea is grappling with growing cases of leaking key industrial secrets out of the country. Prosecutors have recently indicted a former employee of Samsung Electronics Co. on charges of stealing and selling the tech giant's industrial secrets involving the manufacturing of the 18-nano DRAM semiconductor to a Chinese semiconductor manufacturer. The sentencing committee plans to finalize the new guidelines at a meeting in late March after collecting feedback through public hearings. Judges are not obliged to strictly adhere to sentencing guidelines but are required to provide specific reasons when they reach a sentence that deviates from the guidelines. Source: Yonhap News Agency
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