A former employee of SK Hynix has been sentenced to prison for stealing trade secrets after receiving a job offer from a subsidiary of Chinese telecommunications company Huawei.
On August 9, the Seoul High Court's Criminal Division 10-1 (Judges Lee Sang-ho, Lee Jae-shin, and Lee Hye-ran) upheld the original sentence of 1 year and 6 months in prison for Kim, who was charged with violating the Industrial Technology Protection Act and the Unfair Competition Prevention Act.
Kim was accused of unlawfully leaking and misusing advanced technology and trade secrets related to the company's CIS (COMS Image Sensor) while working at SK Hynix's local subsidiary in China in 2022.
It was confirmed that Kim committed the crime after receiving a job offer from HiSilicon, a subsidiary of Huawei. He reportedly violated security regulations by printing or photographing trade secret documents from the company's internal document management system for use in his resume.
The first trial court found Kim guilty of leaking trade secrets and sentenced him to prison. However, he was acquitted of charges related to leaking information on hybrid bonding technology necessary for implementing High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence.
The appellate court also found no legal errors in the first trial's judgment. The court criticized Kim, stating, "The defendant leaked a large amount of trade secrets and disclosed them by submitting a resume to a Chinese company, indicating the severity of the crime."
However, the court considered Kim's acknowledgment of his crimes and the fact that most of the leaked trade secrets were recovered as mitigating factors in sentencing.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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