Former SK Hynix employee jailed 18 months for leaking chip tech to Chinese firm

A former SK Hynix employee has been sentenced to 18 months in jail for leaking semiconductor manufacturing technology to a Chinese firm, the Yonhap news agency reported, according to Reuters. The Seoul High Court upheld a lower court sentence on appeal for leaking classified information on CMOS image sensors, non-memory chips used in smartphone cameras and laptops, to a Chinese company in 2022, Yonhap said. Reuters reported the employee had worked at SK Hynix's office in China, printed out or photographed trade-secret documents from the company's internal server in violation of security rules, and disclosed some of the information in a resume submitted to the Chinese firm, which was not named. The man admitted all of the charges, and most of the material 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.