South Korean National Pleads Guilty to Attempting to Illegally Export Poached Succulents

Byungsu Kim, a South Korean national extradited to the U.S. from South Africa, pleaded guilty to attempting to illegally export Dudleya succulent plants, the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California said. Kim pulled the plants, worth more than $600,000, from the ground at various state parks in Northern California and attempted to ship them to Asia. Kim carried out the scheme with two co-defendants: Bong Jun Kim, who served a four-month prison sentence, and Youngin Back, who remains a fugitive.

Kim admitted to traveling to California in 2018 and harvesting the Dudleya plants from DeMartin Beach and Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, the Department of Justice said Sept. 9. He then told a county agriculture inspection official in Vista, California, he had the necessary government-issued certificates to export the plants and that the certificates should list 1,397 Dudleya plants marked for shipment to South Korea. The plants were then handed to a commercial exporter in Compton, California, where they were seized by local law enforcement, the DOJ said. Kim was arrested and his passport confiscated.

Kim obtained a fraudulent South Korean passport from the South Korean Consulate in Los Angeles that he used to escape to Mexico. He then flew to South Korea. Kim was arrested in South Africa in 2019 for a similar scheme where he illegally shipped plants collected from protected areas to South Korea, DOJ said.