Former SK Hynix employee jailed for leaking information to Chinese firm, Yonhap reports
A logo of semiconductor and memory chip maker SK Hynix during the company's debut on the Nasdaq market in New York City, US, July 10, 2026. — REUTERS
A former employee at SK Hynix has been sentenced to 18 months in jail for leaking information on semiconductor manufacturing technology to a Chinese firm, the Yonhap News Agency reported on Sunday.
The Seoul High Court made the ruling in an appeal case against the defendant, upholding the lower court's sentence for leaking classified information on so-called CMOS image sensors, a technology used for non-memory chips in smartphone cameras and laptops, to a Chinese company in 2022, Yonhap said.
The court found that the employee, who formerly worked at SK Hynix's office in China, printed out or took photos of documents containing trade secrets downloaded from the company's internal server, a violation of its security rules, according to Yonhap.
The defendant disclosed some of the information in a resume submitted to a Chinese firm, Yonhap said, without naming the Chinese company.
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The man admitted all of the charges and most of the information he took was retrieved by the company, the report said.
The Seoul High Court did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment outside business hours.