South Korea's $2M chip betrayal: Samsung researcher jailed for leaking chip secrets to China

A South Korean court said on Wednesday it had sentenced a former researcher at Samsung Electronics to seven years in prison for leaking semiconductor technology to a Chinese company.

The Seoul Central District Court found the defendant, identified only by his surname, guilty of violating the Industrial Technology Protection Act, ruling that the leaked data constituted a national core technology and that he had conspired in the breach.

The 56-year-old was among 10 people indicted last year on suspicion of leaking memory chip manufacturing technology to Chinese chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), a case authorities said helped pave the way for China's development of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a critical component for artificial intelligence computing.

Samsung Electronics declined to comment. CXMT did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Yonhap News Agency reported that the defendant leaked Samsung's DRAM process technology to CXMT after moving to the Chinese firm with a former Samsung Electronics official. Citing the prosecution's office, Yonhap also said he received about 2.9 billion won ($1.96 million) over six years from CXMT in return.

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The Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office was not immediately available for comment when contacted by Reuters.

Last year, CXMT said it planned to raise 29.5 billion yuan ($4.33 billion) through an initial public offering of 10.6 billion shares in Shanghai. The leading Chinese chipmaker said it would use the listing proceeds to upgrade production lines and technologies.

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