Employees of the Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety (KINS) under the Nuclear Safety And Security Commission are suspected of systematically leaking core technologies of the APR1400 reactor.
The APR1400 is a Korean-designed advanced pressurized water reactor applied to the Shin Kori Units 3 and 4, Shin Hanul Units 1 and 2, and the Barakah nuclear power plant in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and it is the core of a domestically built nuclear plant that aggregates decades of accumulated technology.
On the 16th, Choi Hyeong-du of the People Power Party, a member of the Science. ICT. Broadcasting. and Communications Committee of the National Assembly, said based on materials submitted by the Nuclear Safety And Security Commission and KINS, "Former and current senior executives at KINS downloaded a large volume of internal documents, including APR1400-related review and inspection materials, over three months from October to December 2023 and took them out on an external hard drive."
Choi said, "At the time, an internal security officer directly lifted PC security controls on a contract worker, aiding the crime, and it was also confirmed that the related logs were entirely deleted with an administrator account afterward."
The case is currently under investigation by the Patent Crimes Unit of the Daejeon District Prosecutors' Office. The National Intelligence Service's Industrial Secret Leakage Center requested an investigation from prosecutors on Aug. 1.
On Sept. 3, after prosecutors opened the investigation, KINS dismissed the person in charge, Mr. A, from his post for "document leakage–related" reasons. Mr. A is said to have even received a special promotion not provided for in internal rules after signs of document removal emerged.