A former employee of South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for leaking confidential semiconductor manufacturing technology to a Chinese company, according to reports on Sunday.
The Seoul High Court upheld a lower court ruling that found the former employee guilty of disclosing classified information related to CMOS image sensor technology in 2022.
CMOS image sensors are non-memory semiconductor components widely used in devices including smartphone cameras and laptops.
According to the court findings, the employee, who had worked at SK Hynix’s operations in China, downloaded confidential documents from the company’s internal server and either printed or photographed them in violation of company security regulations.
Some of the information was subsequently disclosed in a résumé submitted to a Chinese company, although the firm involved was not publicly identified.
The former employee admitted the charges, while SK Hynix was able to recover most of the information that had been taken, according to the report.
The ruling comes amid heightened concern in South Korea over the protection of strategically important semiconductor technologies and industrial trade secrets.