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Engineer charged with leaking technology to China

Prosecutors have arrested a former senior engineer with South Korea's LG Electronics for stealing and leaking flat-screen TV technology to China, officials said yesterday.

The Seoul southern district prosecutors' office said it had charged the 49-year-old man identified only as "Jeong" with stealing technology used to manufacture plasma display panels (PDP).

After leaving LG Electronics in 2005, Jeong smuggled out computer files on the design of LG's PDP plant, prosecutors said. Jeong was later employed by a firm in China that was preparing to produce such panels.

"His act clearly constitutes theft," prosecutor Jang Sang-ki, said.

Jeong could also face a charge of leaking technology, he said.

The prosecutor said another two LG employees had been indicted.

Jang said Jeong had since February last year been working as a technology adviser at COC (Changhong-Orion PDP-Chaihong of China) and had helped it build a PDP plant in Sichuan Province.

The technology involved producing eight separate PDP units from a single large PDP sheet. LG Electronics first adopted it in July last year.

"The technology leak is expected to bring some 1.3 trillion won [US$1.4 billion] in losses to our company," an LG Electronics spokesman said, without giving any breakdown of the figure.

The spokesman said only three companies -- LG Electronics, Samsung SDI and Matsushita of Japan -- had developed the technology.

He said LG Electronics expects the Chinese company to begin producing PDPs using the same technology beginning in December this year.
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