“More than 2,000 foreigners participated in the Ministry of SMEs and Startups’ core technology research…only 3 people did verification.”

Analysis of National Power Party Rep. Choi Su-jin’s office… “We must fully investigate the unauthorized use of foreigners in core R&D.”

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Jo Daun = It was pointed out on the 12th that the Small and Medium Business Technology Information Promotion Agency (KOCCA) under the Ministry of SMEs and Startups is virtually neglecting the indiscriminate participation of foreigners in national core technology research and development (R&D) projects, raising concerns about technology leakage.

According to data received from the Ministry of SMEs and Startups and the Promotion Agency on this day by People Power Party lawmaker Choi Soo-jin, a member of the National Assembly's Trade, Industry, Energy and Small and Medium Venture Business Committee, a total of 2,161 foreign nationals have participated in national core technology R&D projects under the Ministry of SMEs and Startups over the past five years.

By country, American nationality was the largest with 371 people, followed by China with 342 people, Vietnam with 175 people, India with 158 people, Canada with 149 people, Indonesia with 89 people, and Pakistan with 86 people.

However, during the same period, there were only two studies that the Promotion Agency designated as 'security tasks' and examined security risk factors, and accordingly, it was found that only three foreign nationals who were subject to prior review were Pakistani and Ethiopian nationals who participated in the studies.

Representative Choi pointed out that even in this case, proper verification was not carried out due to expedient practices such as changing researchers in the middle of the project, and because of this, foreigners who had not gone through security review were unauthorizedly employed in R&D projects for core technologies such as next-generation lithium secondary batteries.

Rep. Choi said that in response to Rep. Choi's point, the Promotion Agency excluded the foreigners in question from the project.

Rep. Choi said, "The Small and Medium Business Technology Information Promotion Agency's behavior of involving foreigners in security tasks but not going through a review process is a clear dereliction of duty," and added, "We must fully reinvestigate the status of national core technologies to identify violations of security regulations, such as unauthorized input of foreigners, and consider strong sanctions such as recovery of project costs."