Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix Semiconductor Technology Leak to China: Partner Company Executives Sentenced to Prison

Executives and employees of a domestic partner company who were prosecuted for stealing core semiconductor technologies from Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix and transferring them to China were sentenced to prison in the first trial.

On the morning of the 13th, the Criminal Division 25-3 of the Seoul Central District Court (Presiding Judge Ji Gui-yeon) sentenced Shin, the vice president of domestic semiconductor equipment company M, who was indicted for violating the Industrial Technology Protection Act, to one year in prison. Research director Lim and sales group leader Park were each sentenced to one year and six months in prison with a two-year probation and fined 30 million won. Most of the other executives and employees indicted, including the quality group leader, were also found guilty and received suspended prison sentences or fines. The corporation M was fined 400 million won.

Lim, Park, and others were prosecuted in January 2021 on charges of leaking SK Hynix’s HKMG semiconductor manufacturing technology and cleaning recipes, which are national core advanced technologies, to Chinese semiconductor competitors from August 2018 to June 2020. HKMG technology is the latest semiconductor manufacturing process technology that uses new materials to enhance the performance of DRAM semiconductors. Shin and others were indicted for secretly using advanced semiconductor technologies and trade secrets, including supercritical cleaning equipment blueprints obtained through a former employee of Semes, a Samsung Electronics subsidiary, to develop equipment for export to China. The supercritical cleaning equipment, first developed worldwide by Semes, is a core technology used by Samsung Electronics in manufacturing 10-nanometer class DRAM semiconductors, utilizing liquid carbon dioxide to dry semiconductor cleaning chemicals.

The prosecution began the investigation after receiving information from the National Intelligence Service’s Industrial Confidentiality Protection Center. Although they denied the charges, claiming that M owned the related technologies, the court found most of the charges to be true. Other executives of M and former Semes employees indicted as accomplices in the Semes-related charges were sentenced to one to one and a half years in prison in separate first trials and have appealed.

Meanwhile, in April, the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office distributed the 'Revised Prosecution Case Handling Standards' to all local prosecutors’ offices nationwide and decided to strictly respond by detaining and investigating crimes involving the overseas leakage of national core technologies. The basic sentencing guidelines were raised to seven years for national core technology leakage and five years for industrial technology leakage. The scale of damage will also be introduced as a major sentencing factor. According to the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, a total of 117 cases of industrial technology leakage overseas were detected over six years from 2017, of which about 30.7% (36 cases) involved national core technology leakage. The estimated damage scale, based on expected corporate sales and research and development expenses from 2017 to September last year, reached approximately 26 trillion won.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.