In Korea, The recent amendment to the Unfair Competition Prevention and Business Secret Protection Law, which became effective 21 July 2004, has redoubled its efforts against industrial espionage. However, in spite of the Korean government's such efforts to revise the relevant laws and regulation for the effective enforcement on the industrial spies, is not yet sufficent to protect the holder's civil rights of business(trade) secret and to formulate the workable standard to fit all criminal protection against economic espionage. And recently the Industrial Technology Outflow Prevention and Protection Law, which became effective 28 April 2007, was be established in September. 2006.
The purpose of this articles is to explain especially the Unfair Competition Prevention and Business Secret Protection Law §3 iii and reviews legal confliction of employer and the employee regarding a secret maintenance duty of the business in the labor contract, including the case which does not have the clear contract regulation or the clear labor contract regarding a secret maintenance obligation and the case which business secret infrigement occurs after retiring of the employee.
This articles suggests some methods with the principle of legal balance between the holder's rights of business(trade) secret and the profit of the employee as the secret maintenance obligatory person(including the employee after retiring, considering the freedom of occupation selection at the constitutional law), and the profit of the competitive dealers to solve the confliction fundamentally.