Former SK Hynix employee jailed for leaking information to a Chinese firm: Report

A former employee at SK Hynix has been sentenced to 18 months in jail for leaking information on semiconductor manufacturing technology to a Chinese firm, the Yonhap news agency reported ‌on ⁠Sunday.

The Seoul ⁠High Court made the ruling in an appeal case against the defendant, upholding the lower court's sentence, for leaking classified information on so-called CMOS image sensors, a technology used for non-memory chips in smartphone ⁠cameras and ‌laptops, to a Chinese company in 2022, Yonhap said.

The court found that ⁠the employee, who formerly worked at SK Hynix's office in China, printed out or took photos of documents containing trade secrets downloaded from the company's internal server, a violation of its security rules, according to Yonhap.


The defendant disclosed ‌some of the information in a resume submitted to a Chinese firm, ​Yonhap said, ​without naming ⁠the Chinese company.

The man admitted all of the charges and most of the information he ​took was retrieved by the company, the report said.

The Seoul High Court did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment outside business hours.