Court rejects wrongful dismissal claim over unauthorized crypto mining at public institute

A former senior official at the Korea Food Research Institute lost a wrongful dismissal suit after being fired for secretly mining cryptocurrency with the institute’s facilities, Yonhap News reported. The former official, identified only as A, was found to have installed two GPU servers in a storage area at a promotional hall whose operations had effectively been suspended and mined about 71 million altcoins from February to September 2023. During the process, air-conditioning installation and network and electrical work were also carried out using the institute’s budget. The court ruled the dismissal could not be seen as a disciplinary action that had lost its validity under socially accepted standards, handing down a verdict against the plaintiff.