A former SK Hynix employee has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for leaking semiconductor manufacturing technology to a Chinese company, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported on Sunday.

According to the report, the Seoul High Court upheld a lower court's sentence in the appeal case after finding that the defendant took classified information on CMOS image sensors, a type of technology used in smartphone cameras and laptop image sensors, while working at SK Hynix's office in China in 2022. The court said the employee printed out or photographed trade secrets downloaded from the company's internal server, violating security rules.

As per Yonhap, the man disclosed some of the information in a résumé submitted to a Chinese firm, which was not named. He admitted to all charges, and most of the information he took was retrieved by the company.