Los Angeles — Authorities said Tuesday that a California man who admitted to shipping weapons and ammunition to North Korea for a surprise attack on South Korea had been sentenced to eight years in prison.
According to a statement from the US Attorney’s office in Los Angeles, Shenghua Wen, 42, entered the US illegally after her student visa expired in 2012 after traveling from China.
According to the statement, Wen entered a guilty plea in June to one count of act as an illegal agent of a foreign government and one count of conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. On Monday, he received his sentence.
Before traveling to the United States, Wen told investigators, he met with North Korean officials at an embassy in China, where they gave him orders to buy supplies for the North Korean government.
According to a federal complaint, he also acknowledged that he attempted to purchase uniforms to conceal North Korean soldiers in preparation for the surprise attack.
With the recent delivery of nuclear-capable missile launchers to frontline military units, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has shown his intention to use battlefield nuclear weapons along the North’s border with South Korea, a US ally.
Resolutions from the UN forbid North Korea from importing or exporting munitions.
Prosecutors claimed that in 2022, he received instructions to purchase firearms from North Korean officials who communicated with him through an online messaging app. In 2023, he used Hong Kong to transport two containers filled with weapons and other goods from Long Beach, California, to North Korea.
According to the complaint, he told US authorities that he was wired roughly $2 million to do so.
The types of weapons that were exported were not specified by authorities in the complaint.
In 2023, Wen paid $150,000 to acquire Super Armory, a federal firearms licensee, and registered it in Texas under his business partner’s name in order to conduct his operation.
Disguising the shipments as refrigerator and camera parts, he had others buy the guns and then drove them to California. Whether Wen had arranged any shipments during his first ten years in the US was not disclosed by investigators.
According to the complaint, the FBI confiscated 50,000 rounds of ammunition from Wen’s residence in the Ontario suburb of Los Angeles in September. The ammunition was kept in a van that was parked in the driveway.
According to the complaint, they also confiscated a transmission detective device and a chemical threat identification device that Wen claimed he intended to transfer to the North Korean government for military purposes.
