Illegal Alien Pleads Guilty in Gun Running Plot to Send Guns to North Korea

I can accept that not every country in the world likes us. If everyone likes you, you’re doing something wrong anyway, so it’s easy to accept. Two countries that don’t particularly care for us are China and North Korea.

China plays nice with us, but they really want to be the superpower on the planet.

North Korea doesn’t like us because we have food and electricity.

The fact that these two countries are buddies is troubling, to say the least. The fact that a Chinese national pleaded guilty to sending guns to North Korea is good news, but the fact that he was trying it isn’t exactly going to help me sleep soundly tonight.

And the whole story is bizarre.

An illegal alien from China pleaded guilty today to federal criminal charges for illegally exporting firearms, ammunition and other military items to North Korea by concealing them inside shipping containers that departed from the Port of Long Beach, California, and for committing this crime at the direction of North Korean government officials, who wired him approximately $2 million for his efforts.

Shenghua Wen, 42, of Ontario, California, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and one count of acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government. Wen has been in federal custody since his arrest in December 2024.

According to his plea agreement, Wen is a citizen of the People’s Republic of China who entered the United States in 2012 on a student visa and remained in the U.S. illegally after his student 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. These government officials directed Wen to procure goods on behalf of North Korea.

In 2022, two North Korean government 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.

In 2023, at the direction of North Korean government officials, Wen shipped at least three containers of firearms out of the Port of Long Beach to China en route to their ultimate destination in North Korea. Wen took steps to conceal that he was illegally shipping firearms to North Korea by, among other things, filing false export information regarding the contents of the containers.

In May 2023, Wen purchased a firearms business in Houston, paid for with money sent through intermediaries by one of Wen’s North Korean contacts. Wen purchased many of the firearms he sent to North Korea in Texas and drove the firearms from Texas to California, where he arranged for them to be shipped.

Wen shipped guns to North Korea labeled as refrigerator parts in one shipment in December 2023, and then shipped 60,000 rounds of 9mm ammunition there.

He also shipped equipment the Department of Justice refers to as “sensitive” to his North Korean contacts, including “a chemical threat identification device and a handheld broadband receiver that detects known, unknown, illegal, disruptive or interfering transmissions.”

Wen faces 20 years in prison for the gun running and another 10 for acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government.

Honestly, this entire case is just bizarre.

The North Korean government wanted American guns and ammunition shipped to them? I mean, I get the sensitive equipment being a thing. They can’t get that lawfully, and they can’t really develop their own without doing a bunch of research and development, which is expensive. Since they don’t have much food, they probably don’t have the money for that, either.

So, stealing the technology makes sense.

But they should be able to make their own guns and ammunition, right? Why do they need to engage a Chinese operative to buy a gun store–how that actually happened should be an interesting story, too, really–and then ship them stuff illegally?

This is just a strange case all around.