Customs officials in South Korea have arrested the executives of a company that ran a chip smuggling operation which saw 53,000 integrated circuit (IC) chips worth $11.6 million sent into China from August 2020 to August 2023, according to a report by Business Korea, which said the executives bought chips from a well-known US semiconductor company supposedly for domestic use but relayed the IC chips to China via air freight that was not declared to customs.
The company, which was not identified, got around restrictions on the import and export of the chips by getting local telecom equipment firms to import more IC chips than they needed so the excess could be repacked in small quantities and sent as ‘sample products’ to China without export permission, the report said, adding that the chips are designated as strategic items because they can convert analog signals to digital in communication relays and used in the making of weapons of mass destruction.
See the full report: Business Korea.
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