SEOUL, December 23 (AJP) - South Korean prosecutors said on Tuesday they have indicted five former employees of Samsung Electronics for leaking core semiconductor technology to a Chinese memory chipmaker.
The Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office said five people were detained and charged with violating South Korea’s Unfair Competition Prevention and Trade Secret Protection Act and Industrial Technology Protection Act. Five others, including engineers at China's ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), were indicted without detention.
Prosecutors said the suspects systematically transferred Samsung’s 10-nanometer-class DRAM process technology by recruiting key engineers and copying critical manufacturing data. At the time, the technology was held exclusively by Samsung, they said.
CXMT later succeeded in mass-producing 10-nanometer-class DRAM in 2023 — the first in China — an achievement prosecutors said is difficult to explain through normal research and development timelines.
According to prosecutors, CXMT was founded in 2016 through investment by a Chinese local government and a semiconductor design company. The company recruited a former Samsung department head as head of development shortly after its launch.
Prosecutors said the researcher was tasked with securing Samsung’s proprietary 10-nanometer-class DRAM process technology and allegedly orchestrated the systematic poaching of key personnel responsible for each stage of the manufacturing process.
The researcher prepared the alleged scheme in detail, including setting up a front company, frequently relocating offices and using coded communications to avoid detection, travel bans or arrest, according to the prosecutors.
Another Samsung researcher allegedly copied by hand process recipe plan (PRP) information — described as critical documentation for DRAM manufacturing — before joining CXMT. Prosecutors said this enabled CXMT to obtain the full 10-nanometer-class DRAM process technology, which at the time was held exclusively by Samsung worldwide.
CXMT later recruited additional Samsung personnel and began full-scale DRAM development, the prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said the leaks caused significant economic damage, estimating Samsung’s 2024 revenue loss at about 5 trillion won, with broader damage potentially reaching tens of trillions of won.
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