Hynix Technology Smuggled to Huawei: Chinese National Employee Faces Trial

Offered High Salary in 2022 and Moved to Huawei

A Chinese national employee working at SK Hynix has been indicted on charges of leaking core technology to the Chinese technology company 'Huawei.'

On the 28th, Yonhap News reported that the Industrial Technology Security Investigation Unit of the Gyeonggi Southern Provincial Police Agency arrested a woman in her 30s, identified as A, a Chinese national, at the end of last month on charges including violation of the Act on the Prevention and Protection of Industrial Technology Leakage, and sent her to the prosecution with an indictment opinion. A is currently on trial at the Suwon District Court Yeoju Branch.

A joined SK Hynix in 2013. She was initially responsible for analyzing defects in semiconductor design and later worked as a team leader-level employee in charge of corporate client consultations at the local Chinese subsidiary from 2020 to 2022. Around June of the same year, after returning to Korea, she received a high salary offer from Huawei and changed jobs.

SK Hynix Icheon Campus View [Image Source=SK Hynix]

The issue is that just before her resignation, she printed out about 3,000 pages of documents related to solutions for core semiconductor process problems. SK Hynix prohibits the use of storage media such as USBs for security reasons and also records detailed information about printed materials, including content, printer, and usage. Although there is a print record of the documents A printed, there is no record of where they were used.

Immediately after the incident, the police, upon receiving a report from SK Hynix, investigated A's specific charges through various circumstantial evidence and arrested her at the airport last month when she entered the country.

The police suspect that A smuggled the printed documents by dividing them into bags and other containers. However, it is reported that A currently denies the charges.

Meanwhile, Huawei has been on the U.S. Department of Commerce's 'blacklist' since 2019 during the Trump administration, preventing it from purchasing advanced technologies including semiconductors. In 2022, the Chinese government provided Huawei with $948 million (approximately 1.293 trillion KRW) in support, intensifying national efforts to develop technology.