Former Samsung personnel arrested for selling exchange secrets to Chinese reminiscence maker

Two former Samsung personnel were arrested in connection with a scheme to sell exchange secrets from the South Korean tech titan to a rival reminiscence maker in China. Experts trust the leak brought on as a minimum 2.Three trillion won ($1.8 billion) in broken, a determine that could swell should Samsung lose marketplace share in the DRAM section.

The Korea Economic Daily reports that the 2 guys, with surnames Kim and Bang, have been arrested previous to the weekend. According to the book, Kim become a former Samsung manager that retired in 2016 before starting work at ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT).

It is alleged that Kim furnished his new organization with exchange secrets and techniques concerning the fabrication process and semiconductor deposition tech used to create Samsung's 16nm chips. In alternate, Kim reportedly received tens of millions in annual earnings.

Deposition is a vital generation in semiconductor production, with chemical vapor deposition (CVD) replacing physical vapor deposition (PVD) because the most important.

Currently, Samsung is liable for kind of 40 percent of the global DRAM marketplace. The switch also extensively narrowed the tech gap between Samsung as the Chinese corporation.

According to South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS), the leak is one in every of more than 30 such events which have taken area in South Korea for the reason that 2018. That is an increase of fourfold compared to the previous five-year period.

Kim and Bang lower back to Korea in October 2023 and have been arrested this past Friday. They have been charged with violating the Act on the Prevention and Protection of Industrial Technology Leakage.

The Korea Economic Daily stated prosecutors plan to ramp up the investigation to see if different accomplices have been worried, and inspect comparable leaks involving Samsung's different fabrication procedures. Some could additionally like to see harsher consequences for the ones convicted of such crimes, the publication added.

CXMT was based in 2016 and had over 3,000 employees as of 2019. In 2022, the National protection Authorization Act banned the US government from the use of or buying reminiscence from CXMT.

Image credit score: Tim Hufner