China’s fast rise in DRAM manufacturing is facing renewed scrutiny after a South Korean court handed down a major sentence in a case tied to alleged corporate espionage involving key memory technology.
A Seoul court has sentenced Jeon Mo, a former Samsung engineer, to seven years in prison for violating South Korea’s Industrial Technology Protection Act. Prosecutors argued—and the court agreed—that he illegally took Samsung’s core DRAM process and design know-how and provided it to China’s CXMT in exchange for significant financial compensation.
According to the ruling, Jeon Mo received about 2.9 billion won (roughly $2 million) over a six-year period. That total reportedly included contract-based incentives and additional compensation structured as stock options. Authorities treated the leak as especially serious because the information involved “core” DRAM intellectual property—precisely the kind of manufacturing and process detail that can speed up development timelines and help a competitor close the gap with established leaders.
This is not the first conviction linked to the same broader issue. In February 2025, an alleged accomplice, Kim Mo—who previously held a management role at Samsung Electronics—was also sentenced to seven years in prison for leaking 18nm DRAM technology to CXMT.
Investigators say the problem may be deeper than a single incident. In more recent developments, prosecutors have charged multiple former Samsung executives and employees over accusations of transferring sensitive technology tied to DRAM production. During the investigation, authorities reportedly found that one former employee had leaked “hundreds of steps” of process information—then corrected and verified those details—information prosecutors believe contributed to China’s first successfully mass-produced DRAM in 2023.
The investigation also suggested an organized recruitment effort, alleging that CXMT used a front company to attract and hire former Samsung staff, potentially giving it access to experience and know-how that would otherwise take years to develop internally.
With consecutive seven-year prison terms and expanding charges, South Korea appears to be signaling a tough stance on semiconductor trade secret theft—especially as global competition around memory chips intensifies and DRAM becomes even more central to everything from smartphones and PCs to AI servers and data centers.
