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Police are investigating a suspected theft of software code for online game "Lineage III" which is being developed by Korea?s largest game maker NCsoft.
The Seoul Metropolitan Police said Wednesday that seven former NCsoft employees are suspected of having sold the technology to a major Japanese game company.

The seven left the Korean firm in February and allowed the Japanese company to review the software during a job interview. Police believe that the technology might have been copied during the demonstration.

The former NCsoft employees are also under suspicion of having leaked the program design of "Lineage III" by email or portable disk last September.

According to police and industry insiders, the game company has suffered from an internal management problem since a senior game developer was fired for poor leadership skills.

But the sacking only led to greater problems for the company, since most of developer?s 90-member team quit with their chief.

On Dec. 23, Seoul Central District Court handed down the same sentence pronounced at first instance on the vice development director of Bluehole Studio - Mr. Park who had tried to disclose Lineage 3's business secrets to a famous Japanese game company during his tenure in NCsoft. Specifically, Mr. Park was sentenced to a fixed-term imprisonment of one and a half years with a 2-year suspension of execution, and Mr. Bae was sentenced to an 8-month imprisonment with a 2-year suspension of execution. But Mr. Yo and Mr. Kang were punished more heavily with a fine of 10 million Wons instead of 7 million Wons decided at fist instance.
The judge at second instance expressed that Lineage 3 undergoing years of development was a valuable asset possessed by NCsoft, so the verdict of innocence was hard to be rendered. But in view of the defendants' repentance, the 2-year suspension of execution was maintained as well.