Due to leaking SK Hynix's commercial secrets to a Chinese company, a man was sentenced to one and a half years in prison in his second trial.

August 9th. According to Yonhap News Agency, a former employee named Kim, who had worked for SK Hynix's Chinese subsidiary, was sentenced to 1 year and 6 months in prison in the second instance for leaking company trade secrets to a Chinese firm.

Kim, who in 2022 moved to work for Chinese companies such as Huawei's HiSilicon, violated company security regulations by printing or taking a large number of CIS (CMOS Image Sensor) related cutting-edge technology and proprietary information from the internal document management system and directly incorporating some of the content into his resume submitted to the Chinese company, thus completing the leak. The prosecution charged him with violating the Industrial Technology Protection Act, the Unfair Competition Prevention and Trade Secret Protection Act, and breach of duty in business. The first-instance court found him guilty of leaking trade secrets and sentenced him to 1 year and 6 months in prison. However, it held that the Hybrid Bonding technology involved was not yet included in the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy's list of cutting-edge technologies at the time, so the related accusation was dropped.

The Seoul High Court's Tenth Criminal Division recently upheld the original judgment in the second instance, stating that Kim extensively leaked business secrets and submitted them to a Chinese company in his resume, which was a serious offense. The information was the result of the victim company's years of research and development. Light sentencing in such cases would weaken the technological development drive of companies and make it easier for foreign competitors to exploit South Korean technology through talent recruitment. The court also considered that he had pleaded guilty in full and most of the materials had been recovered, thus not imposing a harsher penalty.