The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy on Monday will have a deliberation committee to decide on whether to give Samsung Electronics’ chipmaking technologies protection as national core technologies amid a dispute over workplace safety.

Earlier this month, the Ministry of Employment and Labor moved for the disclosure of reports on working conditions of the company’s semiconductor plants, which Samsung said could lead to the loss of industrial secrets.

Ahead of the scheduled committee, Industry Minister Paik Un-gyu told reporters Thursday that the issue should be reviewed with a balanced perspective.

“Experts will discuss whether the company’s technologies are subject to national confidential information, or public knowledge next Monday,” the minister said.

The Industry Ministry is in talks with the Labor Ministry over their contrasting views on the issue, Paik said.

“While the Industry Ministry is supposed to keep trade secrets of local companies from being leaked, the Employment Ministry is to protect safety and rights of workers and the people to be informed of such information,” the minister said.

Samsung has filed an administrative lawsuit against the Employment Ministry to stop it from disclosing reports of working conditions at Samsung’s major semiconductor fabrication complexes in Giheung, Hwaseong and Pyeongtaek in Gyeonggi Province, upon petitions made by a local cable news company and related civil activists.

The reports, regularly submitted to the ministry, contain results of the government’s assessments of the work environment at Samsung’s factories.

They include layouts of the company’s chip plants, which Samsung says would reveal confidential equipment, facilities and materials.

To support its claim at the court, Samsung has asked the Industry Ministry to confirm that Samsung’s semiconductor technologies are being protected by the government as national core technologies. If the ministry agrees, the likelihood of the reports being disclosed to the public will shrink.

Petitions to make the Samsung reports accessible were made to the Labor Ministry after a court’s ruling in February, which ordered Samsung to make public the report on its plant in Onyang, South Chungcheong Province, after the death of a former worker who was diagnosed with leukemia in 2014.

Samsung is maintaining its claim that the company’s technologies are national core technologies defined by the Industry Ministry.

“As of 2017, the ministry defined technologies to produce memory and system on chips on 30-nanometer process and lower as national core technologies and they are subject to the information leak prevention law,” said a Samsung official.

By Song Su-hyun (song@herladcorp.com)