North Korea, Malaysia tussle over Kim’s corpse
At a hospital morgue in Malaysia’s capital, the tightly guarded corpse of a middle-aged man has become the focus of a dizzying case of international intrigue involving five countries, combative North Korean diplomats and an apparently duped female assassin.
Investigators are still trying to piece together details of what appears to be the brazen assassination of Kim Jong Nam, the half-brother of North Korea’s mercurial ruler and an exiled member of the country’s elite. Malaysian police said Saturday they had arrested a fourth suspect, a 46-year-old North Korean man.
Kim, who had been estranged from his younger half-sibling for years, was attacked at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Monday. A rotund man in his mid-40s, he told medical workers at the airport he had been sprayed in the face with a chemical. He grew dizzy, suffered a seizure and was dead within hours, Malaysian officials said.
Without citing much in the way of evidence, observers pointed to the obvious culprit in Monday’s attack: Kim’s half-brother, Kim Jong Un, who has executed a slew of high-level officials since taking power in 2011.
Malaysia arrested four people over the course of the week — including an Indonesian woman who told investigators she was duped into thinking she was part of a comedy show prank.
North Korean officials made no public comments for several days, but they privately demanded custody of Kim’s body and strongly objected to an autopsy. The Malaysians went ahead with the autopsy anyway.
On Friday night, North Korea’s ambassador to Malaysia broke his silence. At an unusual news conference held close to midnight outside the morgue, Ambassador Kang Chol said Malaysia may be “trying to conceal something” and “colluding with hostile forces.”
The results of the autopsy have not been released publicly.