Santa Monica Resident Charged with Espionage

By Lookout Staff

Feb. 5 -- The man arrested at his Santa Monica home Tuesday afternoon was a spy paid by the North Korean government to recruit other agents, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

Korean immigrant John Joungwoong Yai, a 59-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen, was charged with failing to register as a North Korean agent as required by U.S. law and making false statements to U.S. Customs officials.

Yai, a snack shop owner who has lived in the United States for more than 20 years, faces a maximum 20-year sentence in federal prison and is being held pending a bail hearing scheduled for Friday.

According to a 76-page affidavit, Yai was paid by the North Korean government between
December 1997 and April 2000 to identify and recruit other agents to meet abroad with officials of the communist country.

Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, investigators bugged Yai's downtown Los Angeles office and intercepted faxes, e-mail and telephone calls between Yai and his North Korean handlers that were often filled with code words.

However, there was no evidence that Yai had obtained classified documents, federal officials said.

"He is an ideal candidate for recruitment who comes with good computer skills that is vital for today's living and has credentials of a reporter -- a big plus,'' Yai wrote in an intercepted fax allegedly sent to the North Korean Embassy in Beijing, China on May 28, 1998.

The fax was followed the next day by an intercepted phone call from Yai to a travel agent to book a trip to Beijing for the new recruit.

Yai repeatedly traveled to Beijing, then to North Korea, investigators allege.

In addition to China, Yai and his wife, Susan Youngja Yai, traveled to Vienna and the Czech Republic in April 2000 to meet with a North Korean representative, according to the FBI.

When they arrived from Zurich, Switzerland, the couple declared to U.S. Customs officials at LAX that they were not carrying more than $10,000 in U.S. currency, when "in fact, a search revealed that they were carrying $18,179,'' court papers said.

Yai was charged with making fraudulent and false statements to a representative of the United States Customs Service and conspiring to make such statements.