A Sydney civil engineer who made false "grandiose" claims about his links to Kim Jong-Un has been jailed for brokering deals to help North Korea export arms in breach of global sanctions.
But Chan Han Choi will remain free, having already served the three years and six months sentence while on remand after his arrest in 2017.
The 62-year-old pleaded guilty to contravening a United Nations sanction enforcement law for brokering a service for the sale of arms and related material from North Korea between August 5 and December 16, 2017.
This involved the sale of North Korean military equipment and the purchase of Indonesian petroleum products.
He has also pleaded guilty to contravening Australian sanctions by arranging the exportation of coal from North Korea into Indonesia and asked the judge to take into account some arrangements for pig iron.
In the NSW Supreme Court on Friday, Justice Christine Adamson jailed him for a total of three years and six months.
The sentence is to begin on December 16, 2017, the day the South Korean-born engineer was arrested.
He spent almost three years in jail on remand before being released on bail to enable him to prepare for his trial which began in February and during which he entered guilty pleas.
The judge did not specify a non-parole period, as the sentence imposed has now expired.
Choi, who became an Australian citizen in 2001 after migrating here in 1987, pleaded guilty on the basis that none of the transactions had concluded.
Some transactions were deferred because of concerns arising from increased international surveillance of sanctioned trade with North Korea following missile testing by North Korea in August 2017.
Others did not go ahead by reason of his arrest, the judge noted.
While he had no family in, or longstanding connections with, North Korea, Choi testified that he became sympathetic in the late 1990s to the plight of the country's citizens who were suffering from the famine.
"He regarded Korea as a country which was unjustly divided as a result of the Cold War," the judge said.
"However, I do not accept that the offender's trading activities were solely motivated by his desire to help North Korea since he was also motivated to earn income for himself, following the decline of his cleaning business and his difficulty obtaining work on engineering projects."
Justice Adamson found Choi was "susceptible to grandiosity", tending to overstate his role and importance including to those to whom he intended to provide brokering services.
"In his oral evidence, he explained, in substance, that he needed to talk himself up and exaggerate his connection with North Korea in order to be retained as a broker for the transactions."
He falsely told a psychiatrist he had met Kim Jong-Un, who had given him a personal guarantee, but later told the court his uncontrolled diabetes caused him to say this.
The judge rejected the medical explanation" noting "his grandiosity and associated tendency to exaggerate was reflected in statements made to others outside this period, including in the course of his offending conduct".
She stressed the importance of the criminal law in punishing and deterring breaches of sanctions by individuals whose conduct would otherwise undermine the international pressure which the sanctions were designed to exert.
But she also accepted Choi was contrite and his prospects of re-offending were low.
Australian Associated Press
