In the court case of Jun 29 2017 ruling 2017Do3808, Supreme Court ruled that breaking the duty of returning or discarding trade secrets after resignation by revealing trade secrets to competitors or keeping it for own interest is enough to establish post-resignation professional misappropriation. And Supreme Court decided ruled that one cannot be a subject of professional misappropriation after 1year of resignation unless ‘special consideration’ is needed. Therefore, the accused, who created a program based on company’s particular file, cannot be a subject of additional professional misappropriation since the action of the accused was based on already-established professional misappropriation. Furthermore, the Supreme Court ruled that the accused complicit cannot be a complicit of the professional misappropriation since the action of accused complicit is based on already-established professional misappropriation as well. Therefore, the Supreme Court returned the case to the lower court. Based on this case, there is question regarding the relationship between perpetrated time of professional misappropriation and the status of being in charge of the transaction of others’ business after resignation. There is also a question regarding the level of execution based on the speciality of professional misappropriation. This case study is done based on those questions. Then this case study did the reviewed the relationship between the intention of misappropriation and intention of unlawful gains that needs to be proved in order to establish professional misappropriation crimes. The Supreme Court’s ruling that the accused is a subject of already-established professional misappropriation due to nonperformance of returning or discarding trade secrets is problematic. It is problematic for following reasons: First, it ruled out the possibility of accusing the complicit by deciding the perpetrated time as the period of resignation. Second, it contains the possibility of turning the characteristic of misappropriation from offense provoking specific danger to abstract endangerment offenses.

Die dienstliche Untreue ist im Koreanischen Strafrecht ein Vermögensdelikt, das in § 355 Abs. 2 StGB geregelt ist. Bei der (dienstlichen) Untreue handelt es sich um ein Vermögensdelikt, einen Tatbestand, der das Vermögen als Ganzes schützen soll. Der Tatbestand setzt die Verletzung einer besonderen Vermögensbetreuungspflicht voraus. Die Strafbarkeit setzt ferner voraus, dass als Folge der Verletzung der Vermögensbetreuungspflicht ein Vermögensnachteil für den Geschädigten eingetreten ist. Nach der koreanischen Urteile des obersten Gerichtshofs liegt aber ein Vermögensschaden auch dann vor, wenn der Täter nicht nur die Verletzung sondren auch die Gefährdung des Schutzvermögens verursacht hat. Die Strafbarkeit wegen des § 355 Abs. 2 StGB setzt auch Vorzatz vor. Der Täter muss also alle objektive Tatbestandsmerkmale, aber nur die Gefährlichkeit des Vermögensschadens nach der koreanischen Entscheidung des obersten Gerichtshofs, wahrgenommen haben. In Korea wurde ferner das Strafverschärfungsgesetz bezüglich der bestimmten Wirtschaftsdelikten geschaffen, den schweren Vermögensverbrechen hartzubestrafen. Nach dem § 3 Abs. 1 in diesem Gesetz wird der gesetzliche Verschärfungsstrafrahmen des Vermögensverbrechens, wie die Untreue in dieser Arbeit, vom Gewinn unterschieden. In Korea tritt die Problematik im Zusammenhang mit der Urteile des obersten Gerichtshofs vom 2012.12.27. "2012do10822" und 2000.5.26. "99do2781" vor, dass die vom Unternehmer begangene dienstliche Untreue überproportional schärfer verurteilt werden kann. Um diese Probleme der Rechtspflege des Gerichtshofs aufzulösen, ein Gesetzentwurf zur Änderung des Gesetzes im Jahre 2015, der den Tatbestand der (dienstlichen) Untreue mit Klarheit zum Verletzungs- und Zweckdelikt verändern wuerde, wurde von der einigen Abgeordnete eingebracht. In der vorliegenden Arbeit behandelt sich es noch ausführlicher gerade über diese Problematik der beiden Urteile des obersten Gerichtshofs.

The Supreme Court precedent is related to this litigation regarding several important issues. The first issue is on the exact definition of trade secrets acquisition and their use under the Article 18 of the Prevention of Unfair Competition Act. Other pertinent issues are, once an employee appropriates trade secrets or main assets for a rival company, in what case it would be considered as committing occupational breach of trust and what would constitute as onset of the crime.The Supreme Court held that accessing trade secrets within close time frame of the pertaining business activity with intentions to use the confidential business information regarding that activity would be sufficiently deemed as start of the crime. Additionally, in the case of electronic files such as a tub cards holder, the Supreme Court decided that running of the electronic files would be recognized as onset of the crime. These decisions by the Supreme Court are not particularly problematic. On the other hand, since it is more difficult to determine whether a retired or former employee has committed such occupational breach of trust, the issue calls for further discussion. In order to charge a former employee with professional misappropriation, the employee must be “a person who deals with affairs of others.” In such case, if the former employee has signed a contract with the employer to keep trade secret for reasonable time, there are discernable grounds for putting burden on the employee to maintain confidentiality. However, any confidentiality agreement that is either permanent or lacking specific term for time limit can be excessively infringing on the freedom of former employees to choose their occupation. As a result, provided that the former employee does not have a confidentiality agreement, he should not be punished for occupational misappropriation in order to respect constitutional freedom of career choice and to maintain a balanced interpretation. Furthermore, it is likely that the court will interpret an action requiring an employee to keep business information confidential for unreasonably long time many years after expiration of his employment contract as excessively infringing upon fundamental rights of the employee, such as the freedom of career choice. In addition, other related precedents show similar attitudes even when the employee acquires trade secrets by means of his memories. Thus, I strongly believe that the court should be more cautious in this matter in order to guard basic human rights from ambiguous interpretations.