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# FBI alleges S.M. man is a spy for North Korea
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/fbi-alleges-s-m-man-is-a-spy-for-north-korea/
- Published: 2003-02-06T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T01:30:04.000Z
- Author: Carolyn Sackariason
- Tags: Crime, Ocean Park, #archive-import

*Local residents are shocked over spy allegations in S.M.*

A North Korean spy has been living in Santa Monica for more than a year, federal authorities said.

John Joungwoong Yai was a spy paid by the North Korean government to recruit other agents, according to a 76-page affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles that was unsealed Wednesday.

Yai, a 59-year-old former Santa Monica business owner, was arrested by FBI special agents on Tuesday at his 909 Grant St. home in the Ocean Park neighborhood.

Yai is being detained pending a bail hearing scheduled for Friday. He appeared in federal court Wednesday dressed in a sweat suit and sandals, and told a federal court magistrate through an interpreter that he planned to hire a lawyer. The interpreter earlier had spent several hours translating the criminal complaint from English to Korean to Yai.

He faces a maximum 20-year sentence in federal prison, if convicted.

In the criminal complaint, Yai is accused of operating within the United States at the direction and control of North Korean officials.

Yai, a naturalized U.S. citizen who has been living in America for more than 20 years, also was arrested on charges of failing to register as a North Korean agent as required by U.S. law. It is a felony to act as an agent of a foreign government in the United States without notifying the U.S. Attorney General.

The FBI has been operating counterintelligence and covert physical searches on Yai since 1995\. FBI special agent James G. Chang wrote in the affidavit that between December 1997 and April 2000, Yai was a North Korean agent living in the United States. The North Korean government paid him to identify and recruit other agents to meet with North Korean officials abroad, authorities allege.

Some of the agents recruited by Yai planned to get jobs in the U.S. government. One agent was pursuing a job as a clerk in the California District Attorney’s Office, and another agent was looking for work in Washington D.C. where she could be close to politicians.

Chang wrote Yai was the subject of surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act from December 1996 until June 2000\. During that time, investigators bugged Yai’s downtown Los Angeles office and allegedly intercepted faxes, e-mail and telephone calls between Yai and his North Korean handlers. The communications were often filled with code words, the FBI said.

“On April 8, 1998, I was among a number of FBI agents who conducted a covert physical search... at Yai’s office,” Chang wrote in the affidavit. “One of the items found in that search was a five-page document in the Korean language. This document was later translated by FBI intelligence research Ko. It is entitled ‘code charts’... Among the base words or phrases listed on the code chart are ‘White House,’ ‘the state department,’ ‘the Pentagon,’ ‘secret operation,’ ‘military,’ ‘human target,’‘secret code,’‘covert surveillance,’ ‘top secret,’ ‘secret contact,’ ‘recruitment,’ ‘CIA,’ ‘FBI,’ ‘nuclear facility,’ ‘military exercise,’ ‘Korea-US annual security meeting’and ‘invasion.’”

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.

“The information he was providing was all public information, but he was put to task to get top secret information,” said Los Angeles FBI spokeswoman Cheryl Mimuma.

In April 2000, Yai and his wife, Susan Youngja Yai, traveled to the Czech Republic and Vienna to meet with a North Korean representative, authorities said. Upon arrival at Los Angeles International Airport from Zurich, Switzerland, on April 20, 2000, Yai and his wife declared to U.S. Customs officials they were not carrying more than $10,000 in U.S. currency.

“In fact, a search revealed that they were carrying $18,179,” the FBI said in court papers.

Yai, a South Korea native, was charged with making fraudulent and false statements to a representative of the United States Customs Service and conspiring to make such statements, a criminal affidavit said. Yai’s wife was charged with making and conspiring to make fraudulent and false statements within the jurisdiction of the United States.

Yai’s wife will receive a summons to appear in federal court at a later date.

The investigation is ongoing to determine whether Yai’s actions posed any threat to national security, Mimuma said.

Although the State Department has listed North Korea as a sponsor of terrorism, terrorist activity was not suspected in the case, officials said.

The Yais have a son who attended UC- Berkeley and is currently studying law, and a daughter. John Yai reportedly had owned a snack shop called Bon Appetit, located at 1821 Wilshire Boulevard.

After Yai was arrested on Tuesday, FBI agents searched the house and seized computer equipment, documents, travel information and other written communications.

News crews descended upon the quiet neighborhood as FBI agents searched the home, which alerted Yai’s neighbors that something had happened. When they found out agents were searching the home of a possible spy, neighbors were shocked.

“He definitely doesn’t look like a spy,” said Farhad Ashofteh, Yai’s next door neighbor.

Another resident said of a possible spy living near him, “That would be interesting in your neighborhood, wouldn’t it?”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 6, 2003.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/020603.pdf?ref=smdp.com)