Prosecutors Seek 20-Year Prison Term for Former Samsung Manager Over "Core Technology Leak"

Retrial After Supreme Court Overturns Previous Not-Guilty Verdicts

A former manager at Samsung Electronics who leaked core semiconductor technology to a Chinese company has been sentenced to 20 years in prison and a fine of 200 million won was requested by the prosecution.

On April 2, at a hearing held by the Criminal Division 10-1 of the Seoul High Court, prosecutors requested this sentence for Mr. Kim, the former Samsung Electronics manager indicted on charges of violating the Industrial Technology Protection Act and the Unfair Competition Prevention Act.

In response, Mr. Kim’s lawyer pleaded for leniency, stating, “The defendant did not play a leading role, nor was he in a position to do so. He worked only in production plants unrelated to development, was excluded from the development process, and was ultimately dismissed.”

The lawyer added, “The defendant actively cooperated with the investigation and contributed to revealing the accomplices. Furthermore, the defendant’s family is currently facing financial difficulties and is unable to pay such a large fine.”

Mr. Kim is accused of leaking key technologies, including semiconductor deposition equipment design drawings from Samsung Electronics and its partner Eugene Technology, after moving to ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) in China, and uploading them without authorization to a separate network-attached storage (NAS) server.

Previously, in the first and second trials, Mr. Kim was sentenced to six years in prison. The courts applied a violation of the Unfair Competition Prevention Act for the “use” of trade secrets by uploading confidential information to the NAS server. However, they found him not guilty of “leakage” and “acquisition,” determining that the exchange of trade secrets among accomplices was merely a means to use the confidential information, not an offense in itself.

However, the Supreme Court overturned part of the earlier not-guilty verdicts. The Supreme Court sent the case back, ruling that the lower courts’ view—that the exchange of trade secrets among accomplices was only a means for use and not a violation of leakage and acquisition charges—should be reconsidered, indicating Mr. Kim should be found guilty on those counts as well.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.