Ex Samsung researcher among 10 charged for leaking chip tech to China

Former Samsung Electronics staff have been charged with leaking the company’s advanced technology and manufacturing processes to China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies.

Samsung and other affected companies have recorded estimated losses of tens of trillions of won due to the technology theft.

ChangXin Memory Technologies steals tech from Samsung

South Korean authorities have charged 10 individuals with stealing and transferring critical semiconductor manufacturing technology to Chinese chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT).

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office announced that of the 10 individuals indicted, five suspects remain detained in custody and five were released on bail. The indictments involve violations of South Korea’s industrial technology protection law.

Prosecutors revealed that a former Samsung researcher preparing to join CXMT painstakingly transcribed hundreds of manufacturing process steps for the company’s 1.6 trillion won technology by hand before leaving the company.

These handwritten notes contained extremely detailed information about the specifications for the equipment, production sequencing, and yield optimization techniques. CXMT later used these notes to reconstruct Samsung’s manufacturing processes at its own facilities.

South Korea opened eight technology leak cases in the first half of 2025 alone, with five of those cases involving China as the recipient of stolen information.

The legal consequences for technology theft have been relatively lenient, but South Korea revised its prevention laws earlier in 2024 to impose harsher prison terms and increased fines for violators.

What did CXMT do with the stolen technology?

CXMT adapted and validated the stolen data to work with its own equipment and successfully achieved the production of its own 10-nanometer DRAM in 2023. Due to this theft, CXMT became the first Chinese chipmaker to produce such advanced node chips.

Prosecutors found that CXMT also obtained additional DRAM technology from SK Hynix through an unnamed supplier.

Earlier this year in May, an SK Hynix employee surnamed Kim received a five-year prison sentence plus a 30 million won fine for leaking advanced chip packaging and CMOS image sensor technology to Huawei’s HiSilicon division.

Kim allegedly photographed approximately 11,000 pages of technical documents and removed confidentiality markings before sharing the sensitive information.

In a separate 2024 case, authorities picked up a Chinese national at a Korean airport attempting to leave the country after printing over 3,000 pages of semiconductor defect analysis data before joining Huawei. The suspect had been with SK Hynix since 2013.

Prosecutors explained that CXMT used the illegally obtained manufacturing processes from Samsung to come up with its own high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, which is a hot commodity for customers building AI accelerators and graphics processing units used for machine learning and data center operations.

South Korean authorities estimate that the financial damage to companies like Samsung Electronics, when things like potential lost market and research and development costs are considered, amounts to at least tens of trillions of won.

At the time the technology was stolen, Samsung was the only company to have successfully commercialized 10-nanometer DRAM production.

Last month, CXMT unveiled its latest generation of DRAM products, known as DDR5. Cryptopolitan reported that the company is pursuing a Shanghai stock exchange listing with a targeted valuation of $42 billion.

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