China purchased Samsung's secret technologies used in memory production from former employees of this company. The spies earned several million dollars, and the damage they caused runs into billions of dollars. They have already been arrested.
Don't steal, buy
Two former employees of Samsung (one of the largest developers and manufacturers of memory chips in the world) who recently returned to South Korea from China were arrested. According to The Register, police believe that these individuals left for China several years ago, where they worked for the local company ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), and along the way sold it Samsung intellectual property.
SKHMT also produces memory modules and is one of the largest players in this area. Intellectual property in this case refers to the technologies that underlie Samsung's 16-nanometer DRAM production.
How long they have been engaged in industrial espionage for China remains to be seen, but this activity has made them rich. According to KED Global, the couple earned “several million US dollars” (the exact amount is not disclosed).
Fatal return
Suspicion fell on two ex-Samsung employees, known as Mr. Kim and Mr. Bang, back in May 2023. The version that both of them may be involved in the transfer of Korean IT secrets to China was put forward by the National South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS), calling for an investigation.
Kim and Bang, after spending several years in China, returned to Korea in October 2023, and in mid-December 2023, at the request of the Korean prosecutor's office, they were detained on suspicion of violating the Korean Law on Preventing Leaks of Industrial Technologies.
KED Global reports that the Information Technology Crime Investigation Department of the Seoul Central District Prosecutor's Office has collected all the necessary evidence against Kim and Bang, which it plans to present to the investigation and the court. Both suspects were taken into custody on December 15, 2023.
Not enough details
By the time the material was published, there was less information about Kim and Bang in the public domain than we would like. Kim, The Register writes, retired in Korea in 2016 and subsequently went to work for SHMT in China.
An early investigative report states that SHMT paid Kim an annual salary in exchange for several million dollars, which seems very strange. According to the preliminary version, Kim shared semiconductor deposition technology borrowed from Samsung with his Chinese employer.
There is much less information about the second arrested person, Bang. For now, he is simply called a “former Samsung subcontractor.”
Don't let China go ahead
Prosecutors who want to send Bang and Kim to prison claim that the damage from the leak, to which they link both arrested men, amounted to 2.3 trillion Korean won, which is about $1.8 billion at current exchange rates.
But it appears that money is not the only thing on the Korean side of the dispute. The documents also mention that the information transferred to China could reduce the technological gap between the Chinese SHMT and the Korean Samsung and save it years of research and development.
Currently, the efforts of NIS and Korean prosecutors are focused specifically on the semiconductor deposition technology that Kim and Bang could transfer to China. However, further investigations are already being planned to cover seven more Samsung semiconductor manufacturing processes that may have leaked to CXMT without the involvement of Kim and Bang.
Why does China need all this?
As you know, China has been under US sanctions since 2018, which are hitting many sectors of its economy, but especially hard in the IT sector. The United States is trying with all its might to prevent China from developing in this direction, including in the production of memory modules - this is clearly visible from how at the end of 2022 the New World imposed sanctions on the Chinese flash memory vendor YMTC.
The company was forced to make massive staff cuts and cut costs, but by the fall of 2023 it received large government financial assistance in the amount of $7 billion and was able to get back on its feet - even creating a new advanced type of flash memory.
As for the global DRAM memory market, as The Register writes, Samsung's share in it is about 40%. It is not yet a monopolist, but is already close to it. Significant technology leaks like those described above can be a serious problem for a company seeking to maintain its hegemony in the memory industry.
According to KED Global, these types of leaks have become more and more frequent lately. NIC statistics show the same thing: over the past five years, the number of leaks in chip production technology has quadrupled. Therefore, some are calling for tougher punishment.
The SHMT company immediately issued a statement regarding what was happening. According to Reuters, it says that the company “respects intellectual property rights and has a robust mechanism to prevent the inflow of third-party information from its employees”. The company declined to provide more specific comments.
Don't steal, buy
Two former employees of Samsung (one of the largest developers and manufacturers of memory chips in the world) who recently returned to South Korea from China were arrested. According to The Register, police believe that these individuals left for China several years ago, where they worked for the local company ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), and along the way sold it Samsung intellectual property.
SKHMT also produces memory modules and is one of the largest players in this area. Intellectual property in this case refers to the technologies that underlie Samsung's 16-nanometer DRAM production.
How long they have been engaged in industrial espionage for China remains to be seen, but this activity has made them rich. According to KED Global, the couple earned “several million US dollars” (the exact amount is not disclosed).
Fatal return
Suspicion fell on two ex-Samsung employees, known as Mr. Kim and Mr. Bang, back in May 2023. The version that both of them may be involved in the transfer of Korean IT secrets to China was put forward by the National South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS), calling for an investigation.
Kim and Bang, after spending several years in China, returned to Korea in October 2023, and in mid-December 2023, at the request of the Korean prosecutor's office, they were detained on suspicion of violating the Korean Law on Preventing Leaks of Industrial Technologies.
KED Global reports that the Information Technology Crime Investigation Department of the Seoul Central District Prosecutor's Office has collected all the necessary evidence against Kim and Bang, which it plans to present to the investigation and the court. Both suspects were taken into custody on December 15, 2023.
Not enough details
By the time the material was published, there was less information about Kim and Bang in the public domain than we would like. Kim, The Register writes, retired in Korea in 2016 and subsequently went to work for SHMT in China.
An early investigative report states that SHMT paid Kim an annual salary in exchange for several million dollars, which seems very strange. According to the preliminary version, Kim shared semiconductor deposition technology borrowed from Samsung with his Chinese employer.
There is much less information about the second arrested person, Bang. For now, he is simply called a “former Samsung subcontractor.”
Don't let China go ahead
Prosecutors who want to send Bang and Kim to prison claim that the damage from the leak, to which they link both arrested men, amounted to 2.3 trillion Korean won, which is about $1.8 billion at current exchange rates.
But it appears that money is not the only thing on the Korean side of the dispute. The documents also mention that the information transferred to China could reduce the technological gap between the Chinese SHMT and the Korean Samsung and save it years of research and development.
Currently, the efforts of NIS and Korean prosecutors are focused specifically on the semiconductor deposition technology that Kim and Bang could transfer to China. However, further investigations are already being planned to cover seven more Samsung semiconductor manufacturing processes that may have leaked to CXMT without the involvement of Kim and Bang.
Why does China need all this?
As you know, China has been under US sanctions since 2018, which are hitting many sectors of its economy, but especially hard in the IT sector. The United States is trying with all its might to prevent China from developing in this direction, including in the production of memory modules - this is clearly visible from how at the end of 2022 the New World imposed sanctions on the Chinese flash memory vendor YMTC.
The company was forced to make massive staff cuts and cut costs, but by the fall of 2023 it received large government financial assistance in the amount of $7 billion and was able to get back on its feet - even creating a new advanced type of flash memory.
As for the global DRAM memory market, as The Register writes, Samsung's share in it is about 40%. It is not yet a monopolist, but is already close to it. Significant technology leaks like those described above can be a serious problem for a company seeking to maintain its hegemony in the memory industry.
According to KED Global, these types of leaks have become more and more frequent lately. NIC statistics show the same thing: over the past five years, the number of leaks in chip production technology has quadrupled. Therefore, some are calling for tougher punishment.
The SHMT company immediately issued a statement regarding what was happening. According to Reuters, it says that the company “respects intellectual property rights and has a robust mechanism to prevent the inflow of third-party information from its employees”. The company declined to provide more specific comments.
