Seoul:South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) has identified over 100 cases of industrial technology leaks to foreign entities in the past five years, with semiconductors making up nearly 40% of these incidents.

According to Yonhap News Agency, data submitted by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources to the National Assembly reveals that the NIS detected 107 cases of overseas industrial technology leaks between 2021 and 2025.

The data highlights that semiconductor technologies were the most frequently leaked, with 40 cases. This was followed by display technologies with 21 cases and electrical and electronics technologies with 10 cases. Automotive technologies were implicated in seven cases, and shipbuilding technologies in six.

Of the total cases, 31 involved national core technologies, which are crucial to national security and economic stability because of their significant technological and economic value. Semiconductors were again the most affected, with nine cases, followed by display and electrical and electronics technologies, each with five cases.

A particularly serious breach involved a former Samsung Electronics manager accused of leaking the company's 18-nanometer DRAM manufacturing technology, a designated national core technology, to the Chinese company ChangXin Memory Technologies.