Ex-SK Hynix Employee Gets 18-Month Sentence for Leaking Trade Secrets to Chinese Firm
Seoul High Court upheld an 18-month prison sentence for a former SK Hynix employee surnamed Kim who leaked image sensor trade secrets to a Chinese company. While working at SK Hynix's Chinese subsidiary in 2022, he printed and photographed confidential documents after receiving a job offer from Huawei's chip unit HiSilicon Technologies. He was convicted of violating South Korea's industrial technology protection and unfair competition laws, as well as breach of trust.
A former employee of South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix has been sentenced to one year and six months in prison in a second trial for leaking trade secrets to a Chinese company. Criminal Division 10-1 of the Seoul High Court upheld the first-instance sentence for the former SK Hynix employee surnamed Kim, who was charged with violating the Industrial Technology Protection Act, the Unfair Competition Prevention and Trade Secret Protection Act, and breach of trust.
Kim was accused of leaking advanced technology and trade secrets related to image sensors in 2022 while working at SK Hynix's Chinese subsidiary, and of putting the information to malicious use. The investigation found that he had received a job offer from HiSilicon Technologies, a chip subsidiary of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, before committing the offence. To prepare his resume, he violated the company's security regulations by printing and photographing confidential material from the company's document management system, which was then leaked externally. Part of the trade secrets cited in his resume was transmitted to the Chinese company.