Samsung DRAM leak case ends in five-year sentence as Chinese chipmakers recruit talent

A South Korean appeals court cut a former Samsung employee's prison term for leaking memory chip secrets to China's CXMT A South Korean appeals court has sentenced a former Samsung Electronics employee to five years in prison for leaking the company’s chipmaking technology to a Chinese rival. The ruling, handed down on October 22, 2026, trims two years off the seven-year term he received at his first trial in April. The former employee, identified as Jeon, spent nearly three decades at Samsung. In 2016 he joined ChangXin Memory Technologies, better known as CXMT. The information he leaked concerned Samsung’s 18-nanometer-class DRAM process technology. DRAM is the working memory inside phones, laptops and servers, and making it well depends on tightly guarded manufacturing know-how. At the core of the case was a document called the “Process Recipe Plan.” It covered approximately 600 manufacturing steps that Samsung had refined over time. Samsung reportedly spent more than 1 trillion won and five years developing the technology. According to prosecutors, Jeon received about 2.9 billion won, or approximately $2 million, over six years. That figure included stock options. Jeon acknowle...