Two former Samsung employees were arrested in South Korea on charges of stealing $3.2 billion worth of intellectual property from their former employer to build their own factory in China for chip production purposes. The Seoul police have not released the full names of the suspected perpetrators, only referring to them by their last names: the “The two men, referred to as “Choi” and “Oh”, are accused of working with Chinese government agents to recruit South Koreans with significant experience in the semiconductor sector who may have previously worked for other giants for their business.
To start a Chinese chip manufacturing company called “Chengdu Gaozhen”, a former Samsung executive identified a number of Korean experts from the semiconductor industry, including the other person arrested, who previously worked as a senior researcher at Samsung. Police suspect that he hired an expert for a senior position in charge of process design. had already been hired to help access company secrets related to the South Korean giant’s 20-nanometer manufacturing technology for copying.
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According to the police, the economic value of the leaked technologies could be 4.3 trillion Korean won/3.2 billion dollars. It is not yet possible to confirm whether the arrest is related to a previous case that was brought to a South Korean court last year. At that time, the former head of Samsung was also brought to court on the charge of stealing business information, but the coincidence of the last names lends strong suspicion to the assumption.
Industrial espionage is not new, in fact it is at its peak: last year Chinese spies stole secrets related to the Dutch ASML chip production technology, but such activity was also reported between South Korea and North Korea. And in the wake of the various chip sanctions, it will be even more difficult to imagine the activity slowing down in the future.
Source: www.hwsw.hu
