Prosecutors in South Korea have done so a Chinese national charged that updated in the defect analysis SK hynix with stealing semiconductor technology. The suspect is said to have taken thousands of pages of information about front-end semiconductor technology for the Chinese chip maker Huawei.
The unknown woman was arrested at a South Korean airport in April 2024, according to Gyeonggi Nambu provincial police officials. She is accused of violating South Korea’s law on the prevention of disclosure and protection of industrial technology. The law imposes strict criminal penalties on anyone convicted of leaking or stealing technological information from South Korea.
According to prosecutors, the unidentified woman started working for SK hynix in 2013. She then worked as a team leader at a Chinese subsidiary of the company from 2020 to 2022. Her role was to analyze design flaws that caused semiconductor failures.
When the Chinese national returned to South Korea in 2022, she is said to have taken a stand there Huawei almost immediately. But before she left SK hynix, prosecutors say she printed 3,000 pages of A4 paper containing solutions to key problems with semiconductor processes.
Police suspect that the woman carried the documents out of the country in bags to hand over to Huawei. She has denied the allegations. SK hynix does not allow the use of USB storage devices and tracks all printing orders within the company.
When SK hynix learned of the large number of pages the woman had printed, it reported the anomaly to the police. By then, the Chinese national had already left the country. When she reentered South Korea in 2024, police arrested her at the airport.
Under South Korean law, the woman faces up to 18 years in prison if convicted. The country’s sentencing guidelines are stricter for those convicted of smuggling certain key technologies, including: production methods for semiconductorsfrom the country.
South Korea has seen an increase in criminal cases involving stealing technology on behalf of Chinese companies. In December 2023 two ex-Samsung employees were charged with stealing DRAM technology for Chinese chipmaker CXMT.
