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Chinese man given eight-year prison term in U.S. for exporting firearms, ammunition to Nort Korea

Published: 20 Aug. 2025, 08:45 Updated: 20 Aug. 2025, 14:29

Martin Estrada, U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, announced charges on Dec. 3, 2024 against a Chinese man in California who is accused of illegally shipping weapons and ammunition to North Korea. [AP/YONHAP]

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.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California said Tuesday that 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 $2 million for the efforts.

Wen pleaded guilty to the charges in June. Wen has been in custody since December 2024.

The attorney's office said that Wen met North Korean officials at a North Korean embassy in China before he entered the U.S. in 2012, and that 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 and instructed him to buy and smuggle firearms and other goods, including sensitive technology, from the United States to North Korea via China, according to the office.

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, it said.

It noted that 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.

It also said that last September, Wen bought about 60,000 rounds of 9-mm ammunition to be shipped to the North.

In addition, the office said that 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, it said.

Yonhap