5 years in prison for former employee who leaked Samsung DRAM… 2 years less than the first trial

A former Samsung Electronics employee was sentenced to five years in prison by the Seoul High Court on October 22, 2026, for leaking DRAM process technology, down from seven years in the first trial. The appellate court found Samsung suffered hard-to-recover damage and that national industrial competitiveness was threatened, but reduced the term because the defendant was not directly involved in development work, testified in related trials, and admitted the charges with remorse. The employee worked at Samsung from 1987 to 2015 before joining a Chinese memory company in August 2016. The case underscores South Korea's push to protect core semiconductor process know-how as it competes with China in memory chips.