A report published September 29 said former Samsung Electronics employee Jeon apologized to Samsung at an appeal hearing on September 9. Jeon’s testimony alleged that David Wang, then CEO of ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), pressured Korean engineers to provide information on Samsung’s 18-nanometer DRAM manufacturing process. Jeon’s case was on appeal at the time, following a seven-year prison sentence.
The allegation against CXMT’s then-CEO
Jeon alleged in testimony that Wang pressed Korean team members, including Jeon, for Samsung process and equipment information between October and December 2016. According to Jeon’s account, Wang threatened to report the engineers to the Korean government if they did not cooperate.
The technology at issue was Samsung’s 18-nanometer DRAM process. DRAM, or dynamic random-access memory, is the memory used in products such as computers and phones. The process recipe plan (PRP) is manufacturing documentation describing the production sequence, equipment, operating conditions, equipment manufacturers and model names.
The reported trail of process information
A former Samsung process-architecture engineer identified as Park was accused of copying process information by hand into 12 pages of notes in September 2016, before leaving Samsung.
In 2022, investigators reportedly found a server-stored PowerPoint titled “reference photos” containing images of Samsung’s 18-nanometer DRAM PRP. The discovery followed the arrest of Kim, head of CXMT’s first development team, in a separate technology-leak case.
Jeon’s sentence and appeal
Jeon received a seven-year prison sentence, and his case was on appeal as of September 29, 2026. Ten people, including Jeon and Yang, head of CXMT’s second development team, were arrested and indicted. Most of the other defendants maintained that they did not know the PRP had been brought in illegally.
