A Chinese citizen, Shenghua Wen, has been sentenced to eight years in prison for smuggling firearms and military equipment to North Korea, as reported by the US justice department.
According to their statement, Wen, age 42, was paid approximately $2 million by North Korean authorities to transport these items from California. A resident of Ontario, California, Wen has been in custody since December 2024, and pleaded guilty in June to conspiracy charges regarding the violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, as well as acting as an unauthorized foreign agent.
Wen’s actions highlight the methods North Korea uses to evade international sanctions on its arms trade. Entering the US on a student visa in 2012, Wen overstayed his visa, which expired in December 2013, and prior to his arrival, met with North Korean government officials in China at a North Korean embassy.
In 2022, two North Korean officials contacted Wen via an online messaging platform, instructing him to smuggle firearms and other goods from the US to North Korea. By 2023, Wen had sent at least three containers of these items from the Port of Long Beach to China, with the final destination being North Korea. He falsified the export information on these containers.
One such container, falsely reported to contain a refrigerator, arrived in Hong Kong in January 2024 before being forwarded to Nampo, North Korea. Wen also acquired a firearms business in Houston using money from a North Korean contact and subsequently transported the weapons from Texas to California for shipping. In September of the same year, Wen purchased about 60,000 rounds of 9mm ammunition with plans to ship them to North Korea.
Additionally, Wen obtained “sensitive technology” – including a chemical threat identification device and a handheld broadband receiver – with the intention of sending it to North Korea. The justice department noted that Wen acknowledged the illegality of shipping firearms, ammunition, and sensitive technology to North Korea in his plea agreement.
The United Nations Security Council prohibits North Korea from trading arms and military equipment, with the US imposing its own sanctions due to the country’s nuclear and ballistic missile activities. Despite these measures, North Korea has found ways to bypass the sanctions.
In similar cases, the US blacklisted a Singapore-based shipping firm in 2015 for supporting illicit arms shipments to North Korea. In 2016, Egyptian authorities stopped a North Korean ship carrying over 30,000 grenades destined for Egypt. Furthermore, British American Tobacco was fined more than $600 million in 2023 for selling cigarettes to North Korea in violation of the sanctions.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg4xg0dlzwpo?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss
