N Korea alleges Kim conspiracy
MALAYSIA: North Korea has blamed Malaysia for the death of one of its citizens there last week and accused it of an ‘‘unfriendly attitude’’ in a scenario drawn up by South Korea, which has said Pyongyang agents assassinated North Korean leader Kim Jongun’s half-brother Kim Jong-nam.
Malaysia had initially told North Korea that the person bearing a diplomatic passport had died after suffering a heart attack at Kuala Lumpur airport on February 13, Pyongyang’s state-run KCNA news agency said yesterday.
KCNA said Malaysia quickly changed its position and started to complicate the matter after reports surfaced in South Korea that the man was poisoned.
‘‘What merits more serous attention is the fact that the unjust acts of the Malaysian side are timed to coincide with the anti-DPRK conspiratorial racket launched by the South Korean authorities,’’ KCNA said, using the North’s formal name of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
KCNA, in the first official media report of the killing, did not name the person who died on the way to a hospital or acknowledge that he was the estranged older half-brother of Kim Jong-un, referring to him only as ‘‘a citizen of the DPRK’’.
Malaysia has requested Interpol to put an alert out to apprehend four North Korean suspects in the murder of Kim Jong-nam.
Malaysia’s police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said yesterday that two women - one Vietnamese, one Indonesian - arrested last week had been paid for carrying out the fatal assault on Kim, using a fastacting poison, but declined to say if they were working for a spy agency.
Police are also holding one North Korean man, but are seeking another seven in connection with the murder.
Three of them - a diplomat, a state airline official, and another man - are believed to still be in Malaysia. The other four are believed to have returned to North Korea.
A senior Malaysian security source said Hyon Kwang Song, 44, a senior diplomat with the rank of second secretary at the North Korean embassy in Kuala Lumpur, was ‘‘the supervisor of the whole plot’’.
Khalid said the police had sent an official request to the embassy requesting to interview the second secretary and the airline official.
He said an arrest warrant would not be issued for the second secretary, as he had diplomatic immunity, but that ‘‘the process of the law will take place’’ if the airline official, named as Kim Uk Il, 37, did not come forward.
Police had yet to receive DNA samples from Kim Jong-nam’s next of kin, Khalid said.
North Korea’s ambassador has said the Malaysian investigation cannot be trusted.
The embassy issued a statement yesterday saying that the three suspects who have been detained should be released.