A former employee of SK hynix was sentenced to 18 months in prison and fined ₩20 million ($14,300) for stealing critical semiconductor technology before moving to Huawei, reports the Korea Biz Wire. The court found her guilty of breaching South Korea's laws on industrial technology protection. However, the lax sentence indicates that prosecutors have failed to prove that Huawei had received the confidential information.
The defendant had worked at SK Hynix since 2013, beginning in chip defect analysis. In 2020, she became a team leader in business-to-business customer relations at the company's subsidiary in China. Her tenure provided access to sensitive technical documents essential to chip production. Then, in 2020, she decided to move on to Huawei (which pays a lot). But before resigning from SK hynix, the defendant printed approximately 4,000 pages of highly sensitive documents over four days.
