Intrigue surrounds the death of Kim’s half-brother
It has all the ingredients of an outlandish spy thriller: a secretive dictator, his playboy half-brother, and a supposed pair of female assassins.
At the centre of the plot is Kim Jong Nam, the older half-brother of Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s leader.
The 46-year-old playboy was believed to have been murdered on the orders of his younger half-brother, who is said to live in fear of being overthrown by his family members.
Kim Jong Nam, who has frequently spoken out publicly against his family’s dynastic control of the isolated state, was waiting to board a plane at Kuala Lumpur airport in Malaysia on Monday when his killers struck.
He complained to airport staff that his face had been sprayed while he was in the shopping concourse before boarding a flight to Macau.
He was in “extreme pain”, Abdul Samah Mat, the police chief of Malaysia’s Selangor state, said. “Kim Jong Nam told staff that his face was feeling extremely painful because of an unidentified liquid sprayed at him. He was then taken for treatment at KLIA [Kuala Lumpur international airport] clinic.
“We will look through the CCTV to find if there’s any suspicious persons in the airport.”
Earlier reports in South Korea media claimed Kim Jong Nam died after being jabbed with a poisoned needle by two female spies at the airport.
Shortly after he was attacked, Kim Jong Nam collapsed and was taken to a local hospital where he died.
A passport found on his body identified him as “Kim Chol”, according to Malaysian police. Kim Jong Nam is known to have used forged passports to travel abroad in the past.
Mohmad Salleh, the Malaysian CID director, said: “He was taken to KLIA clinic for further treatment, but because of the condition he was in, he was rushed to Putrajaya hospital, but passed away soon after arriving.
“Police have classified the death of Kim Jong Nam as sudden death and are waiting for the full postmortem report to decide further action.”
Kim Jong Nam was once considered the heir apparent to Kim Jong Il, but fell out of favour in 2001 after being arrested at Tokyo’s Narita airport after trying to enter Japan on a forged Dominican Republic passport.
He told police that he had wanted to visit Disneyland with his family.
Exiled by his father, he lived in Macau until Kim Jong Il died in late 2011. He subsequently went into hiding, apparently out of fear that his half-brother saw him as a threat to the legitimacy of his own regime.
If it is confirmed that Kim Jong Nam was assassinated at the behest of Kim Jong Un, it will not have been the first attempt on his life.
North Korean spies allegedly attempted to kill him in Macau in 2011. A bloody shootout with his bodyguards reportedly ensued, but he managed to escape alive.
Nor would it be the first time North Korea’s supreme leader has ordered the execution of one of his own family members. In 2013, he ordered the killing of Jang Song Thaek, his uncle and mentor.
Subsequent reports that he had allegedly been fed to a “pack of hungry dogs” were discredited.
Koh Yu Hwan, a professor at Dongguk University in Seoul, said Kim Jong Nam had occasionally been the subject of speculation that he could replace his younger halfbrother. “Loyalists may have wanted to get rid of him,” he said.
Kim Jong Nam said in an interview in 2010 that he had no ambitions of seizing power from his half-brother.
“Personally I am against thirdgeneration succession,” he told Japan’s Asahi TV. “I hope my younger brother will do his best for the sake of North Koreans’ prosperous lives.”
Jihyun Park, a North Korean defector based in Manchester who fled the dictatorship in 1998 and now works as a human rights activist, said: “The fate of Kim Jong Un, his aides, and those who obey North Korean dictators, will disappear on the day Pyongyang’s regime collapses.”