SK Hynix Ex-Employee Sentenced to 18 Months for Leaking Trade Secrets

Seoul High Court upholds 18-month prison term for former SK Hynix staff who leaked CIS data to Chinese firms, citing severe threat to R&D incentives.

Woofun AI reports that the 10th-1 Criminal Division of the Seoul High Court upheld a sentence of one year and six months for Kim, a former Korean national employee of SK Hynix's Chinese subsidiary. The conviction stems from leaking trade secrets to a Chinese company. In 2022, Kim violated security protocols by extracting sensitive CIS information from internal systems to include in a resume submitted to Huawei's HiSilicon. The court dismissed charges related to Hybrid Bonding technology, as it was not listed under advanced technologies, but maintained the penalty for the CIS leak. The ruling emphasized that leniency could undermine R&D investment motivation and facilitate technology theft via talent recruitment, though the sentence was slightly reduced due to Kim's admission of guilt and the recovery of most materials.