Stephen Jin-Woo Kim
Stephen Jin-Woo Kim (Photo: Stephen Kim Legal Defense Trust)
In 2010, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a specialist in nuclear proliferation who worked as a contractor for the State Department, pleaded not guilty to charges of leaking information about North Korea to Fox News. He was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury, but the case has not yet been brought to trial.
Fox journalist James Rosen, with whom Kim had been in touch in the past, reported in 2009 that North Korea would likely test another nuclear missile in reaction to a pending United Nations Security Council resolution condemning its nuclear tests. The Justice Department said Kim was Fox’s source.
Kim, who immigrated to the US from South Korea when he was nine years old, told Bloomberg News that “to be accused of doing something against or harmful to US national interest is something I can’t comprehend.” Kim’s lawyers said that he was being charged for participating in the type of exchange between experts and the press “that happen hundreds of times a day in Washington.”
“In its obsession to clamp down on perfectly appropriate conversations between government employees and the press, the Obama administration has forgotten that wise foreign policy must be founded on a two-way conversation between government and the public,” his lawyers said.
In April 2014, Kim was sentenced to 13 months in prison.
