Samsung fires semiconductor engineer for mishandling company secrets

Workers walk through Samsung Electronics' semiconductor plant in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, in this file photo. Courtesy of Samsung Electronics

Korean tech giant vows to get tougher on industrial espionage

By Park Jae-hyuk

Samsung Electronics has experienced continued data leaks, amid the intensifying global competition for supremacy in the semiconductor sector, according to industry officials, Wednesday.

Samsung Electronics said its Device Solutions (DS) division in charge of chip production dismissed an engineer recently who was found last month to have sent dozens of emails containing proprietary data to private email accounts.

The company also asked for police to investigate the case.

“Through disciplinary measures and legal actions, we will be tough on coping with this issue,” a Samsung Electronics spokesman said.

In March, another Samsung Electronics engineer mishandled confidential company data by uploading source code to ChatGPT. This case led the company to restrict its employees from using the artificial intelligence-based chatbot during work.

Last year, a Samsung Electronics engineer, who was preparing to move to a foreign company, was found to have taken and stored hundreds of photos of important data displayed on his monitor, while working from home.

After the conglomerate asked for an investigation into the case in April last year, the engineer was fined 10 million won ($7,500) and sentenced to 18 months in jail with two years of probation. Prosecutors lodged an appeal against the ruling, demanding a harsher punishment.

There was another similar data leak carried out by a Samsung Electronics worker, who was preparing to move to a domestic subcontractor of the company. The worker was sent to prison last month.

Earlier this year, former researchers of Semes, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, were given prison sentences for manufacturing and selling 71 billion won worth of equipment to Chinese firms by using the company's trade secrets illegally.

Data given by a state intelligence agency to Rep. Kim Kyung-man of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea showed that the agency has uncovered 10 leaks of industrial technologies to foreign countries within the first three months of this year.

The Federation of Korean Industries estimated Korea's annual economic losses from industrial espionage at around 56 trillion won.

Although Samsung and other Korean tech firms have struggled to prevent the outflow of confidential technologies to their rivals in China and other foreign countries, calls have grown for fundamental measures to eradicate industrial espionage.

“The current law is not effective enough to prevent the leakage of industrial technologies,” said Cho Yong-sun, an industrial security professor at Hansei University. “Stricter punishments are needed to prevent such crimes.”

In response, lawmakers of both the ruling and opposition parties have proposed bills recently to impose stricter punishments on people who leak industrial technologies to foreign countries.