A former employee of SK Hynix has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for leaking semiconductor technology to a Chinese company, according to a report from South Korea’s Yonhap news agency on Sunday.
The Seoul High Court upheld this sentence after an appeal, confirming that the individual had taken classified information related to CMOS image sensors. These sensors are commonly used in smartphone cameras and laptop image systems. The court found that while working in SK Hynix’s office in China in 2022, the employee had printed or photographed trade secrets obtained from the company’s internal server, breaching security protocols.
The report also mentioned that the man included some of this stolen information in a résumé he submitted to an unnamed Chinese firm. He admitted to all charges, and most of the information he took has since been recovered by the company.
