After being passed over for promotion to executive, former corporate researchers who were indicted on charges of recruiting other employees and leaking the company's semiconductor wafer polishing (CMP) technology to China were also sentenced to prison terms on appeal.
On the 19th, the Daejeon High Court Criminal Division 1-1 (Presiding Judge Park Jin-hwan, Director General judge) sentenced former researcher A, 59, indicted on charges including violating the Act on Prevention of Divulgence and Protection of Industrial Technology, to the same two years and six months in prison as the lower court.
Two accomplices indicted with A on the same charges received heavier sentences than in the first trial: one year and six months in prison, and two years in prison with a fine of 20 million won, respectively. In the first trial, they had received two years in prison suspended for three years, and one year and six months in prison suspended for two years.
From 2019 to 2020, they are accused of accessing the company network via computers and work cellphones, viewing company confidential materials such as semiconductor wafer polishing process diagrams, photographing them with their phones, and leaking them to a Chinese firm.
After A was passed over for promotion to executive in 2018, A agreed in June 2019 to run a semiconductor wafer polishing compound manufacturing business with a Chinese firm, yet continued working and managed the business via messenger and other means.
The court said, "This was a planned and organized crime, and there is a need to sound a warning across the semiconductor industry to prevent similar crimes in the future," adding, "We do not accept the defendants' claim that the leaked materials do not constitute national core technology."