“I ate what they gave me in the jail,” the defendant told Judge Charles Norgle, speaking through a Mandarin interpreter, to show that he was following proceedings.

“What was it?”

“Milk and cereal.”

“And how was it?”

“It was…OK.”

The court proceedings for a case involving North Korea, the FBI and an alleged arms supplier and money launderer from Taiwan began with a conversation about breakfast.

The defendant, 69-year-old Taiwanese businessman Hsien Tai Tsai, also known as Alex Tsai, was pleading guilty to a litany of crimesrelated to supplying equipment for the production of weapons of mass destruction to