A man who erased thousands of digital files owned by his former employer has been fined 5 million won ($3,800), a South Korean court said Wednesday.

The Seoul Eastern District Court assessed the punishment for a 35-year-old former employee of a local online retailer. The former employee was indicted on interference with business charges for erasing 4,216 files the company had saved to Google Drive in April 2021. He had been feuding with the company over distribution of profit, and quit the company just after he erased the files.

The defendant also reset the company homepage to its initial setting.

He claimed that he merely moved the files to Google's trash folder and had no intention to obstruct the company's business, saying the files could be restored from the trash folder. The court, however, pointed out that the data could not be restored after 30 days.

"The company only managed to retrieve parts of the data. (The defendant) also reset the homepage, making it impossible for the company to restore much of the content it had been working on," the court said in its verdict.

The defendant has appealed.

South Korea's Criminal Act stipulates that interference with business shall be punished by up to five years in prison or 15 million won in fines.