Starting next year, South Korea's corporate watchdog will take stronger measures to crack down on large conglomerates that steal technology from small-and-medium sized businesses.
 
The Fair Trade Commission(FTC) on Friday said it plans to ramp up penalty measures for large businesses found to have leaked core technologies of smaller companies they have subcontracted as well as ban them from requesting information about production and management costs.

Under review is a proposal to have companies found to have stolen crucial technology to pay three times the amount of damages.

The FTC will launch a special team to oversee extortion cases and select sectors to focus on each year. Next year, the focus will be on the automobile and machinery sectors.