Yeoju: A local court sentenced a former Chinese employee of SK hynix Inc. on Thursday to 1 1/2 years in prison for stealing core semiconductor manufacturing technology from the company before moving to a rival firm. The 36-year-old Chinese national began working in SK hynix’s department responsible for analyzing faulty semiconductor designs in 2013 before moving to the firm’s Chinese branch, where she handled consulting for company-to-company transactions from 2020-2022.
According to Yonhap News Agency, upon returning to South Korea in 2022, she moved to Chinese technology firm Huawei that same month for a higher annual salary. Investigations found that before leaving SK hynix, she printed out around 4,000 pages of company data on solutions in the semiconductor manufacturing process, despite the firm’s ban on using data storage devices and its thorough logs of in-house printouts for technology security reasons.
On Thursday, the Yeoju branch of the Suwon District Court sentenced the defendant to 1 1/2 years
in prison, along with a fine of 20 million won (US$14,319), convicting her of violating the act on protecting industrial technology. “The semiconductor technology printed by the defendant was designated as core state technology in 2022,” the court concluded, dismissing the defendant’s claim that she did so for personal study. The court concluded that the defendant may have pocketed the information to boost her value with the new employer, citing her move to Huawei.