A Chinese employee of South Korea’s Samsung Electronics has been arrested for allegedly trying to leak confidential business information, a Seoul prosecutor said yesterday.
The 40-year-old woman is suspected of photographing confidential documents about sales plans and key technologies and storing the image files in her personal laptop.
“Her contract was about to expire without extension when she downloaded all the files from the firm’s computer server, printed them out and took photographs,” Lee Cheon-sei, a chief prosecutor in the case, told reporters.
The woman, who was not identified, had been working for Samsung’s home appliance unit since 2007 and was recently offered a job with a Chinese electronics firm, Lee said without naming the company.
The confidential information included Samsung’s key technologies on reducing noise of home appliances, details of products under development and sales plans for the next 10 years, he said.
“We don’t think the confidential information has already been handed to another firm, but we are still investigating,” Lee said.
The worker was arrested on the weekend after tipped-off prosecutors found evidence at her home during a raid.
A spokesman for Samsung Electronics confirmed the investigation into the researcher and said she no longer worked for the firm.
South Korean prosecutors in recent years have investigated numerous claims of technology or business secrets being leaked to domestic or foreign rivals.
In February last year, two people were charged with stealing trade secrets from Samsung Electronics and selling them to a Chinese home appliance company.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last