Los angeles: A U.S. judge has sentenced a Chinese national to eight years in prison for acting at North Korea's direction to illegally export firearms, ammunition, and other military items to the North, according to a U.S. attorney's office on Tuesday. Shenghua Wen, 42, was given the prison term on Monday for exporting those items to the North by concealing them inside shipping containers and for carrying out the crime at the direction of North Korean officials who wired him about US$2 million for the efforts.
According to Yonhap News Agency, Wen pleaded guilty to the charges in June and has been in custody since December 2024. Listed as an illegal alien in the United States, Wen met North Korean officials at a North Korean embassy in China before entering the U.S. in 2012. The officials directed Wen to procure goods on behalf of North Korea.
In 2022, two North Korean officials contacted Wen through an online messaging platform, instructing him to buy and smuggle firearms and other goods, including sensitive technology, from the U.S. to North Korea via China. The following year, Wen shipped at least three containers of firearms out of the Port of Long Beach to China en route to North Korea. One of Wen's weapons shipments, falsely reported as containing a refrigerator, left the Port of Long Beach and arrived in Hong Kong in January 2014, before being transported to North Korea's western coastal city of Nampo.
Last September, Wen purchased about 60,000 rounds of 9-mm ammunition destined for North Korea. Additionally, Wen obtained sensitive technology for North Korea, including a chemical threat identification device and a handheld broadband receiver that detects known, unknown, illegal, disruptive, or interfering transmissions. He also acquired or offered to acquire a civilian airplane engine and a thermal imaging system that could be used for reconnaissance and target identification.