A shocking news report revealed that three Samsung employees from Korea have been arrested over an alleged accusation of leaking Samsung’s own OLED technology to a Chinese company. The party allegedly involved on the Chinese side too has been arrested in this case.
The report details the alleged crime. According to the filed report, the technology that was leaked was linked with the optical alignment of inkjet printing processes. This would be a high-stake for the Korean company itself since the tech giant has already invested over 8.5 USD in developing this particular inkjet printing technology.
As shocking as it may seem, it is neither the first nor the single case of leaking sensitive information to Chinese companies. There are other similar cases in Korea where a few of the Chinese companies are suspected of OLED espionage.
In 2018, 11 executives and employees of Korean based Toptec, also a Samsung supplier was indicted on the grounds of leaking Samsung’s flexible OLED technology to Chinese display makes BOE and CST.
Among the ones indicted, there are officials on both the Korean and Chinese sides, and a professor at a national Korean research institute. LG Display too reported a similar event and accused Chinese-based companies of the leaks.
As far back as 2012, employees at an Israeli company Orbotech’s local Korean branch were also accused of leaking sensitive information about OLED technology from both LGD and SDC to several companies based in China and Taiwan.
This long list of foul-play was not limited to Chinese companies only, in fact, this had spread to LGD also in 2012 and the company was accused of stealing OLED secrets from Samsung Display. Apparently, Chinese companies are hiring former LGD and Samsung Display employees luring them in with high salaries, and this method works perfectly for pilfering OLED information from Korean companies.
