China yesterday confirmed the detention of a South Korean citizen suspected of espionage, saying it had advised embassy officials, without identifying the individual or detailing the charges.
It is the first time a South Korean national is being held under an expanded counterespionage law that took effect in July last year.
The case could deter investment and operations by South Korean firms in the country’s largest trade partner, following the departure of Japanese expatriates after a compatriot working for Astellas Pharma Inc faced similar charges.
Photo: AFP
It centers on a former employee of Samsung Electronics Co who then worked at a Chinese chip firm, the Yonhap news agency reported.
“The South Korean citizen was arrested by the Chinese authorities in accordance with the law on suspicion of espionage,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Lin Jian (林劍) told a regular news briefing in Beijing, without giving details.
The South Korean embassy in China had been notified, he added.
On Monday, Yonhap said the individual was suspected of leaking semiconductor-related information to South Korean authorities and was living in Hefei in China’s eastern province of Anhui when he was detained.
Major Chinese chip companies, such as ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc (長鑫存儲), are headquartered in the city.
Since Washington began banning export of cutting-edge foreign chips and chipmaking equipment to China in 2020, Beijing has invested billions of dollars in its domestic semiconductor industry to achieve a goal of self-sufficiency.
The tensions around the industry have made Beijing wary of information leaks, which it views as a national security threat.
The confirmation of the arrest also comes after tough measures by Seoul to prevent what it sees as the theft of semiconductor intellectual property by Chinese firms.
Choi Jin-seog, a former Samsung executive who ran a chipmaking venture in China, was detained by the Seoul Central District Court last month on fresh accusations regarding the theft of chip processing technology.
Choi had already been the subject of a high-profile industrial espionage trial since July last year that underscored South Korea’s efforts to fight industrial espionage and slow China’s progress in chipmaking. Choi has denied any wrongdoing.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
RSS