Ex-worker at Korean chipmaker accused of tech theft for Huawei

Staff reporter

A Chinese national who had worked at South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix was arrested and is being tried on charges of stealing key technologies that allegedly helped Chinese company Huawei lower the defect rate of semiconductors.

The employee reportedly joined SK Hynix in 2013, worked in the department analyzing defective chips and served as a team leader at the company's China branch from 2020 to 2022 before switching to Huawei immediately upon returning to Korea in June 2022.

She was accused of printing solutions to core semiconductor process issues on more than 3,000 sheets of A4 paper before leaving her position.

Elsewhere, the US chip giant Micron Technology plans to invest 600 billion to 800 billion yen (HK$29.91 billion to 39.88 billion) in building a new factory in Hiroshima, Japan for the production of Dram chips, with operations expected to commence by the end of 2027 at the earliest, the Nikkan Kogyo newspaper reported.

The report said the company originally planned to have the Japanese factory operational by 2024, but postponed it due to unfavorable market conditions.

Micron Technology acquired the former Dram chip manufacturer Elpida Memory in 2013 which had over 4,000 engineers and technical staff in Japan.