As many countries in the world including the Republic of Korea have used all their
national resources in the accelerating economic information warfare, illegal leakage
of industrial technologies and information has increased rapidly. The costs required
for damage prevention from 2007 to 2008 are estimated at approximately KRW 180
trillion which is expected to increase gradually in future. Because the tricks of leaking
key technologies are also getting increasingly systematized, sophisticated and bigger,
e.g., simple theft at the individual level or the conspiracy of all the staff taking part
in the research activities, we should pay special attention to technology security in
addition to technology development.
While there are several factors affecting such the brain drain, they usually include
personal, social, political and cultural factors, for instance, very heavy educational
expenditure of children compared to relatively low pay, the speedy labor market
circulation for experienced personnel, or political restrictions on researches.
In this context, as part of efforts made to prevent the outflow of core personnel,
individual companies and research institutes should establish systematically
appropriate core personnel management systems for their own organizational or
business goals and principles which are intented to ensure to give better treatment
and benefit to core personnel and to exercise closer supervision over them.
Furthermore, the conventional personnel management system should be radically and
flexibly improved in the manner of encouraging the core personnel returning to the
organization to combine their external experiences with practices, instead of
penalizing them. At the same time, it is necessary to train and educate core personnel
through mutual collaboration and in-house training facilities as well as external
academic programs operated jointly at the level of the industry. Finally, as the issues
concerning the outflow of core personnel are not just problems of relevant companies
and other advanced countries have devoted their best efforts to secure their own key
technologies at the national level, it is urgent for the industry and the competent authorities to cooperate closely.