Former corporate researchers who were sent to trial on charges of leaking the company's semiconductor wafer chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) technology to China by enlisting other employees after being passed over for executive promotion were also sentenced to prison in their appeals trial.
On the 19th, the Daejeon High Court Criminal Division 1-1 (Presiding Judge Park Jin-hwan, Director General judge) sentenced former researcher A, 59, who was indicted on charges including violating the Act on Prevention of Divulgence and Protection of Industrial Technology, to two years and six months in prison, the same as the lower court.
Two accomplices indicted with A on the same charges were given heavier sentences than in the first trial: one year and six months in prison, and two years in prison plus 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 allegedly accessed the company network using computers and work cellphones to view confidential materials such as semiconductor wafer polishing process diagrams, photographed them with their phones, and leaked them to a Chinese company.
After A was passed over for executive promotion in 2018, A agreed in June 2019 to run a semiconductor wafer polishing compound manufacturing business with a Chinese company, yet continued working and managed the venture 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."