> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Alleged spy asks judge for bail this week Santa Monica man currently detained downtown LA - URL: https://www.smdp.com/alleged-spy-asks-judge-for-bail-this-week-santa-monica-man-currently-detained-downtown-la/ - Published: 2003-04-14T15:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-23T02:04:22.000Z - Author: John Wood - Tags: Crime, Downtown, #archive-import *Accused spy was a Santa Monica business owner* A Santa Monica man who is accused of spying for North Korea could be up for bail as early as Wednesday. John Joungwoong Yai, 59, is being held without bail at the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles. He goes before U.S. Magistrate Judge Victor Kenton on April 16 with a motion to grant him bail. A status conference is currently scheduled for early June, said Thom Mrozek, a U.S. Attorney spokesman. William Gennago, Yai’s Santa Monica-based attorney, couldn’t be reached for comment Friday. Yai, who used to own Bon Appetit, a snack shop on Wilshire Boulevard, is accused of being paid by the North Korean government to recruit agents to spy on the U.S. government. He was arrested in February at his home located at 909 Grant St. in Santa Monica. FBI officials said the case has been turned over to the U.S. Attorney’s office for prosecution. “Anything could happen,” said Laura Bosley, a FBI spokeswoman. “It could be postponed, there could be a plea agreement.” The FBI had been operating counterintelligence on Yai and performing covert searches of his property since 1995. Yai was the subject of surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act from December 1996 until June 2000, according to a 76-page affidavit written by FBI special agent James G. Chang. During that time, investigators bugged Yai’s downtown Los Angeles office and allegedly intercepted faxes, e-mail messages and telephone calls between Yai and North Korean officials. The communications were often loaded with code words, the FBI said. The affidavit highlights years of e-mail messages, faxes and telephone conversations between Yai, an agent he allegedly recruited and high ranking officials in the People’s Republic of China and North Korea. “I believe, based on my experience with this case, the reason Yai’s e-mail correspondence was with an e-mail address in Beijing, PRC, rather than an e-mail address in North Korea, was due to the extremely limited availability of e-mail access in North Korea,” Chang wrote. Chang went on to explain that only some high ranking officials in Pyongyang, North Korea, were believed to have limited Internet access through a communication network connected to China, according to the affidavit. “A story in the Washington Times dated February 12, 2001, attributes to a senior U.S. military official the statement that the North Korean leader has access to the Internet, ‘but he’s the only one,’” according to the affidavit. Special agents during their investigation made contact with Yai and one day last August, an agent struck up a conversation with Yai at Bon Appetit. Yai allegedly told the agent in Korean that his real profession is a writer and that he was a reporter for two major newspaper companies in South Korea before moving to the United States, according to the affidavit. Some of the agents allegedly recruited by Yai planned to get jobs in the U.S. government. Chang wrote that one fax sent from Yai on March 16, 1998, detailed information about a new recruit and how he was eager to work toward the “revolutionary cause.” “I believe Person C can be a good candidate since our future workers should be able to speak English well, use computers efficiently, be young and their ideology is beneficial and reliable to our causes,” according to the affidavit. Yai allegedly provided the North Korean government mostly with information that already was made public in the United States via newspaper articles and the Internet. However, North Korean government officials allegedly instructed Yai in 1998 to obtain classified information and under no circumstances continue to feed them information already made public. Yai explained to the agent working with him that the Korean government expected 100 to 150 reports a year and about 40 of them get submitted to top-ranking officials. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/041403-04_04-7.jpg) home of John Joungwoong Yai was searched by FBI agents in Feburary. (Photo: File photo The) *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 14, 2003.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/041403.pdf?ref=smdp.com)