Man Took Cash From N. Korea, Court Told

Santa Monica businessman John Joungwoong Yai admitted having received $20,000 cash from North Korean intelligence officers during a 2000 visit to Prague, an FBI agent testified in U.S. District Court on Friday.

In a tape-recorded interview after his arrest earlier this week, Yai also acknowledged receiving $2,000 to $5,000 from North Korean officials on each of five visits to the Communist country, Agent James Chang said during a bail hearing for the naturalized Korean American.

Yai, a longtime advocate of reunifying South and North Korea, is charged with failing to register as an agent of a foreign government and lying to customs officials about $18,179 that he and his wife had when they returned from Prague.

After hearing defense arguments that the 59-year-old Yai is a devoted father and husband and a devout Christian with strong community ties, U.S. Magistrate Victor B. Kenton ordered him held without bail, pending trial.

“Mr. Yai’s loyalties appear at best to be seriously divided between this country and North Korea,” Kenton said, adding that the defendant posed a flight risk and a potential threat to U.S. security.

The FBI’s agent’s testimony about Yai’s alleged admissions caught defense lawyers William Genego and Michael Nasatir by surprise, sending them into a huddle with their client, who was assisted by a Korean-speaking translator.

Afterward, Genego tried to put the best face on the disclosure, telling Kenton that it demonstrated Yai’s willingness to be forthcoming and honest.

Until then, the defense attorney had contended that there was no evidence that Yai had received any money from North Korean authorities.

Yai, who emigrated from South Korea in 1975, had been under investigation for seven years. FBI counterintelligence agents received permission from the top-secret, Washington-based Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to conduct covert searches, telephone taps, e-mail intercepts and other forms of electronic surveillance.

He was not charged with espionage, however.

“This is a failure-to-register case. Mr. Yai is not a spy,” Genego said in his plea for Yai’s release on bond.

Citing an 80-page FBI affidavit outlining the prosecution’s case, Genego said it shows that Yai did little more than transmit newspaper articles and other publicly available information to North Korea “and that’s not a crime.”

But Assistant U.S. Atty. Daniel Goodman painted a darker picture of Yai’s activities. He argued that Yai was a paid agent of the North Korean intelligence service, that he had been directed by handlers in Pyongyang to obtain “top-secret information” about the United States and that he had tried to recruit agents to assist in that endeavor.

“That’s what this case is about, not passing on public source information,” Goodman told the judge.

Goodman did not elaborate on his claim that Yai was under orders to provide the North Koreans with secret information. The FBI said earlier this week that it had uncovered no evidence that he had secured any classified materials.

Testifying Friday was Yai’s son, Dennis, 25, a recent graduate of UC Berkeley, who described his father as a loving, devoted family man. Yai also has a 24-year-old daughter who attends graduate school at Stanford University.

Also present in the courtroom were about a dozen friends and relatives, including Yai’s wife, Susan Youngja Yai, manager of a bank branch in Koreatown. She too has been charged with making false statements to U.S. Customs agents about the $18,179, but has not been taken into custody.

Yai’s arrest has not only shocked Korean Americans in Southern California but highlighted the precariousness of their standing in the United States, community leaders said.

“Something like this happens, and the whole community suffers,” said Kee-Whan Ha, president of the Korean American Federation of Los Angeles.

Ha said the case, coming amid heightened tensions between the United States and North Korea over the latter’s nuclear program, is stigmatizing all Koreans.

“The average American doesn’t know the difference between South and North Korea,” said Ha, who received a threatening letter at his Mid-Wilshire office Thursday. “So they think all Koreans are part of the nuclear threat.”

Leaders of the Korean reunification movement remember Yai as a soft-spoken participant in the 1970s and 1980s, when South Korea was under authoritarian rule.

Harold Sunoo, now a UC Irvine professor, described Yai as a gentleman who was among 20 people accompanying him to Helsinki to attend a historic 1982 meeting between Korean American Christians and Christians from North Korea.

Sunoo’s group, which also opposed the authoritarian rule of former South Korean Presidents Park Chung-Hee and Chun Doo-Hwan, advocated unification of the two Koreas as one country with separate political systems, like China and Hong Kong. At the time, that proposal was considered a sell-out by the South Korean government, and Sunoo and other leaders were characterized as Communists and refused visas to visit Seoul.

Helen Choi, a longtime Los Angeles resident whose husband was active in the movement, said she remembers Yai and his wife at meetings with their then-young children.

Yai was among 10 or 15 people who faithfully attended meetings held in Koreatown restaurants and churches, former associates said.