California man charged with shipping weapons to North Korea

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A California man has been charged with shipping weapons and ammunition to North Korea and told investigators they were to be used for a surprise attack on South Korea, authorities said Tuesday.

Shenghua Wen came to the U.S. from China on a student visa more than a decade ago after meeting with North Korean officials who instructed him to procure goods for the North Korean government, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles.

Wen, 41, was arrested at his home in Ontario, California, without incident Tuesday and charged with conspiring to violate federal law barring the shipments.

He also told investigators that he tried to buy uniforms to disguise North Korean soldiers for the surprise attack, a federal complaint said.

Wen is expected to appear in court later on Tuesday. His federal public defender, Michael Brown, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“It is essential that we protect our country from hostile foreign states that have adverse interests to our nation,” Martin Estrada, U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, said in a statement.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has demonstrated an intent to deploy battlefield nuclear weapons along the North’s border with South Korea, a U.S. ally, recently delivering nuclear-capable missile launchers to frontline military units.

United Nations resolutions ban North Korea from importing or exporting weapons.

Wen told U.S. authorities in interviews earlier this year that he had exported weapons and ammunition to North Korea at the request of its government. After coming to the U.S. on a student visa in 2012 that was only valid for one year, he stayed in the U.S. illegally, officials said. He was ordered deported in 2018.

Wen said North Korean officials in China contacted him about two years ago to buy firearms and that he shipped two containers of weapons and other items from Long Beach, California, to North Korea via Hong Kong in 2023. He told U.S. authorities that he was wired about $2 million to do so, according to the complaint.

Authorities did not identify in the complaint what types of weapons were exported.

In order to carry out his operation, Wen bought a business in 2023 called Super Armory, a federal firearms licensee, for $150,000, and registered it in Texas under the name of his partner. He had other people purchase the firearms and then drove them to California, misrepresenting the shipments as refrigerator and camera parts. Investigators did not say whether Wen had organized any shipments in the previous decade he was in the U.S.

The FBI in September seized 50,000 rounds of ammunition from Wen’s home about 40 miles (64 kilometers) east of Los Angeles that had been stored in a van parked in the driveway, the complaint said. They also seized a chemical threat identification device and a transmission detective device that Wen said he planned to send to the North Korean government for military use, the complaint said.