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this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2025
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Some specific details of interest about what was smuggled and how it was procured
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.
In December 2023, one of Wen’s weapons shipments – which falsely reported to U.S. officials that it contained a refrigerator – left the Port of Long Beach and arrived in Hong Kong in January 2024. This weapons shipment was later transported from Hong Kong to Nampo, North Korea.
In September 2024, Wen – once again acting at the direction of North Korean officials – bought approximately 60,000 rounds of 9mm ammunition that he intended to ship to North Korea.
Wen also obtained sensitive technology that he intended to send to North Korea. This technology included a chemical threat identification device and a handheld broadband receiver that detects known, unknown, illegal, disruptive or interfering transmissions. Wen also acquired or offered to acquire a civilian airplane engine and a thermal imaging system that could be mounted on a drone, helicopter, or other aircraft, and could be used for reconnaissance and target identification.
anybody have any guesses? HackRF One? Flipper Zero? Just a normal-ass SDR dongle?
Can't anyone anywhere basically buy one of those? I would assume it would have to be something that is export-controlled? It also says handheld, which makes it sound more like a standalone device, but who knows.
The HackRF One product page shows a Chinese seller, as well as ones from Singapore, Poland, Japan, etc. https://greatscottgadgets.com/hackrf/one/#purchasing
They're definitely illegal in some nations because they can transmit (weakly) in frequency ranges that may be restricted. Flippers as well - hell a bunch of people were having their Flippers seized by US customs a year or two ago when they were being shipped into the US. Also for what it's worth you can put the HackRF One into a "portapack" with a little screen and controls for handheld portable radio stuff. SDR dongles plus a phone turn into portable radio devices as well, to be fair.
But also even if they weren't illegal, it's still illegal to send them to NK from the US because of sanctions and stuff.
What I mean is why send them to North Korea from the US when you could just have a Chinese person in China send them? I think there are probably built-to-task devices that the guy was sending. Which I guess were just freely purchasable in the US? Unless the dude had some special access to buy stuff?
Anything built for this task is going to be made in China ultimately
There is US military stuff that is mostly built in the US. That's the one industry they've tried to keep in the US. And that probably includes infrastructure like Intel's chip fabs.
I don't really think the US military is buying handheld RF analysis tools that are wholly made in the USA. Not for nothing, but the "US MADE" MIL gets a huge amount of shit from China, whether officially or under the table. Regular scandals about x supplier actually using Chinese parts.
Been rolling it around in my brain and maybe what they found was some kind of radio logging device whose importance was not that it was being shipped but perhaps it was being used to monitor port activities, security, etc, as it traveled through in a container?