A former executive at SK hynix supplier surnamed Shin has been found guilty of pirating confidential chip technology to China and sentenced to one year of prison time for violating acts related to protecting industrial technology.

Seven employees of the supplier company who faced the same charge were also sentenced to jail time of up to one and a half years.

The supplying company was fined 400 million won ($300,000).

The 59-year-old Shin and the employees were charged with pirating chip technology obtained through doing business with SK hynix between August 2018 and June 2020.

The pirated trade secrets from SK hynix included what is called High-k Metal Gate, known to be a breakthrough technology that reduces energy consumption when the processing speed of dynamic random access memory increases. A cleaning solution recipe for chips were also known to have been leaked to China.

Shin was also charged with manufacturing chip cleaning equipment using supercritical fluid based on the layout map obtained from Semes, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, and selling them to China.

“Leaking the so-called recipe, which is not co-developed with SK hynix, related to cleaning semiconductors overseas is considered to threaten orderly and fair competition,” the Seoul Central District Court said Tuesday.

“Secretly collecting the recipe, putting them in a USB, hiding them in your socks and leaking them overseas is an unjust way of obtaining information using a human resource network.”

BY JIN EUN-SOO [jin.eunsoo@joongang.co.kr]