Key points
- 27 Samsung and SK Hynix veterans worked at CXMT
- Public profiles show 26 have left
- A Korean lawmaker wants to track chip talent abroad
At least 27 senior engineers from Samsung Electronics (삼성전자) and SK Hynix (SK하이닉스) went on to work at CXMT (창신메모리), China's biggest DRAM maker. Only one was identified as still there in an analysis of public career profiles by lawmaker Choi Soo-jin's (최수진) office.
Choi, a People Power Party (국민의힘) member on the National Assembly's science and ICT committee, released the findings for this week's parliamentary audit. Her office reviewed LinkedIn and other public career records.
They averaged 15 years at Samsung or SK Hynix
Together, the 27 engineers had spent 415.9 years at the two companies, an average of 15.4 years each. Six were principal or executive-level staff with more than 20 years in mass production.
Eight worked in circuit design and seven in process integration. Others came from equipment, yield analysis, and advanced packaging, a mix that Dong-A Ilbo (동아일보) said was enough to run a whole chip factory. More recently, engineers with experience designing high-bandwidth memory (HBM) have moved too, the office said.
Many took a detour on the way to China
Fifteen of the 27 didn't go straight to CXMT. They first took jobs at equipment or materials suppliers, foreign companies, or universities. The office said this may have been a way around non-compete agreements, which usually last one to two years.
The offers were generous. Messages from Chinese headhunters obtained by the office offered pay increases ranging from 60% to 100%, three to five years of guaranteed employment, rental housing, and help with children's school costs.
Almost all of them have left CXMT
The engineers stayed at CXMT for 2.9 years on average, and 26 of the 27 had left, according to their public profiles. Seven moved on to other Chinese chip companies, including Huawei's Hong Kong research center and HiSilicon (하이실리콘).
Choi's office suggested CXMT had drawn on the engineers' experience to build factories and stabilize production. But public career records don't establish why they left or whether technology was transferred.
CXMT grew fast over the same years. Its research and development staff rose from 2,606 at the end of 2022 to 7,491 in June, and in September it said its fifth-generation DRAM was in mass production. Samsung and SK Hynix are still planning a memory expansion bigger than CXMT's projected capacity.
The lawmaker wants Korea to track its chip talent
"Semiconductor technology is not just blueprints. It is the experience and know-how that people have built up over 20 to 30 years," Choi said. "We need a national tracking system to monitor and manage the movement of key personnel, and generous compensation and re-employment incentives so talented people can use their skills in Korea."
Korea's industry ministry has taken a different view. "There is no legal basis to crack down on or restrict lawful overseas hiring," the ministry said, according to Dong-A Ilbo.
Meanwhile, in a Bank of Korea survey of 2,694 researchers with master's or doctoral degrees last year, 42.9% of those working in Korea said they were thinking about moving abroad within three years.
The lawmaker's and ministry's comments are translated from Korean.
