Man in US gets 8 years in prison for sending weapons to North Korea

A Chinese national has been sentenced to eight years in prison for smuggling firearms and other military items to North Korea, the US justice department has said.

Shenghua Wen, 42, received around $2m (£1.5m) from North Korean officials to ship the items from California, according to a statement from the agency on Monday.

A resident of Ontario, California, Wen has been detained since December 2024. He pleaded guilty in June to conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and being an illegal agent of a foreign government.

Wen's case shines a light on the various ways in which North Korea circumvents international sanctions on its arms trade.

Describing Wen as an "illegal alien", the justice department said he entered the US on a student visa in 2012 and remained in the country after his visa expired in December 2013.

"Prior to entering the United States, Wen met with officials from North Korea's government at a North Korean embassy in China," the agency said. "These government officials directed Wen to procure goods on behalf of North Korea."

Two North Korean officials reached Wen via an online messaging platform in 2022 and told him to smuggle firearms and other goods from the US to North Korea, according to the justice department.

In 2023, he shipped at least three containers of firearms from the Port of Long Beach to China, with their final destination being North Korea. He filed false export information about the container's contents.

One such container, which he had reported as carrying a refrigerator, arrived in Hong Kong in January 2024 before being sent to Nampo, North Korea.

He also purchased a firearms business in Houston with money from a North Korean contact, and drove the weapons from Texas to California, where they were arranged to be shipped.

Last September, Wen bought around 60,000 rounds of 9mm ammunition with plans to ship them to North Korea.

US authorities also said that Wen obtained "sensitive technology" which he had meant to send to North Korea, such as a chemical threat identification device and a handheld broadband receiver.

"Wen admitted in his plea agreement that at all relevant times he knew that it was illegal to ship firearms, ammunition, and sensitive technology to North Korea," the justice department said.

Under sanctions by the UN Security Council, North Korea is banned from trading arms and military equipment. The US has also imposed its own sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile activities.

But North Korea has developed ways to get around the sanctions.

In 2015, the US blacklisted a Singapore-based shipping firm for allegedly supporting illicit arms shipments to North Korea. In 2016, Egyptian authorities intercepted a North Korean ship containing more than 30,000 grenades bound for Egypt.

And in 2023, British American Tobacco had to pay more than $600m (£445m) for selling cigarettes to North Korea in violation of the sanctions.