HONG KONG/SEOUL: A network of private individuals, including a Chinese national, based in the free-trade port of Hong Kong played a key role in a weapons-smuggling operation involving North Korea that led to the arrest of a Chinese man in the US in 2024, according to multiple people familiar with the case.
The network used an elaborate scheme to transport firearms that had been shipped from the US to Hong Kong, concealing them among the household belongings of North Korean diplomats returning home.
The smuggling operation is believed to still be active, amid weakened international efforts to monitor illicit arms shipments to North Korea.
According to US prosecutors, Shenghua Wen, acting on instructions from North Korean officials, shipped firearms he had procured in the US from the Port of Long Beach, California, to Hong Kong in December 2023.
The weapons arrived in Hong Kong around Jan 1, 2024, and were subsequently transported to North Korea.
United Nations Security Council resolutions prohibit arms exports to North Korea. Wen was sentenced in August 2025.
According to people familiar with the operation, the smuggling effort from Hong Kong was led by a Hong Kong man who effectively controlled a trading company designated as the recipient of the shipment from the US.
He had reportedly also been contracted to transport the household belongings of North Korean diplomats returning home, following the closure of North Korea’s Consulate General in Hong Kong in 2023.
The man is said to have waited for the weapons shipped from the US in December 2023 to arrive in Hong Kong, and then arranged for them to be loaded alongside the diplomats’ belongings onto a cargo ship that was named the Sun Rich and flying the flag of Sierra Leone at the time.
The weapons were falsely declared as being “refrigerators” and “kitchen equipment”.
The deception exploited Hong Kong’s relatively simple import and export procedures as a free-trade port handling enormous volumes of cargo, as well as the expectation that the customs authorities would not closely inspect shipments containing diplomats’ personal belongings.
The diplomats themselves were entirely unaware of the scheme, according to the sources.
Others involved in the smuggling operation included a Taiwanese man who effectively owned the cargo ship and a Chinese man who was the de facto operator of a shipping company, the sources said.
The network continues to operate a fleet of four cargo ships, according to the sources. Its recent activities have included shipments of iron and steel products, whose export to North Korea is also prohibited under UN Security Council sanctions.
The network may also be planning to smuggle petroleum from Malaysia to North Korea.
The UN Security Council’s Panel of Experts, which monitored compliance with sanctions imposed on North Korea, was forced to cease operations at the end of April 2024, after Russia vetoed a resolution to extend its mandate.
Katsuhisa Furukawa, a former member of the panel, examined US prosecution records and cross-checked them against several documents provided to The Yomiuri Shimbun by people familiar with the smuggling operation.
Based on his analysis, Furukawa concluded that there were “substantial grounds to regard the accounts as reasonable and credible”.
The cargo ship used to smuggle the weapons has repeatedly sailed under different names and flags.
It has also been confirmed that the vessel has repeatedly engaged in unusual behaviour, including switching off its automatic identification system, which transmits and receives information about a ship’s location and other data, after leaving Hong Kong and reaching waters around the Yellow Sea.
According to Furukawa, the vessel has “almost no record of calling at the ports it had declared as its destinations, including ports in South Korea”.
“The only plausible explanation is that the vessel has repeatedly made clandestine calls at North Korean ports,” Furukawa added.
He stressed that all UN member states, including China, must implement asset-freezing measures, including seizing the vessel, in accorfdance with Security Council resolutions. - The Japan News/ANN
