A South Korean court has sentenced a former Samsung Electronics researcher to seven years in prison for divulging semiconductor technology to a Chinese company. The Seoul Central District Court, convicting the defendant under the Industrial Technology Protection Act, deemed the leaked information as a crucial national technology and established his involvement in the breach.
The individual, aged 56, was one of ten individuals charged last year for allegedly disclosing memory chip manufacturing technology to Chinese chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT). Authorities highlighted that this case played a pivotal role in advancing China’s capabilities in high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a key element in artificial intelligence computing.
Samsung Electronics and CXMT refrained from providing comments to Reuters regarding the issue. Meanwhile, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office was unavailable for immediate comment when reached out by Reuters.
According to Yonhap News Agency, the accused leaked Samsung’s DRAM process technology to CXMT after transitioning to the Chinese company with a former Samsung Electronics employee. Yonhap, citing the prosecution’s office, also revealed that he received approximately 2.9 billion won ($1.96 million) from CXMT over a span of six years.
In the previous year, CXMT announced plans to generate 29.5 billion yuan ($4.33 billion) through an initial public offering of 10.6 billion shares in Shanghai. The prominent Chinese chipmaker stated that the funds raised from the listing would be utilized for enhancing production lines and technologies.