Assassin in mini-skirt and pink tights

Suspected killer of North Korean leader’s half-brother caught on CCTV after his murder

AT KUALA Lumpur International Airport on Monday morning, the dark- haired, demure young woman in the short blue skirt and pink tights attracted little attention.

Strolling casually through Terminal 2, a small bag on her shoulder and the initials LOL on her white T-shirt, she was just one of the 150 000 or so passengers the Malaysian hub handles each day.

But there was nothing casual about this woman. She was allegedly a trained assassin on a mission to kill, and somewhere in the milling crowds was her female accomplice.

They were stalking their target, a short, overweight playboy with a taste for women, whisky, gambling – and insulting his half-brother, Kim Jong- un, the despotic supreme leader of the barbaric regime in North Korea. It was a regime the “target” repeatedly dismissed as – to use his words – “a joke to the outside world”.

His name was Kim Jongnam, and at 45 he was a man who had lived with the threat of death for years, since fleeing North Korea in fear of torture and execution. There had already been one botched attempt on his life.

He travelled with bodyguards on his regular trips in Asia and occasionally Europe, usually on a false passport, in this case under the name of Kim Chol. But a brief lapse in his personal security between arriving at the airport and proceeding to passport control for his flight to Macau, where he lives in exile, left Kim Jongnam alone. It was this that allowed the assassins to strike in the shopping concourse.

One woman is believed to have grabbed his head from behind – possibly placing a poison-laced handkerchief on his mouth – while another sprayed toxic liquid on him or injected him with poison.

According to US sources, a “fountain pen” may have been used – a device associated with North Korean agents.

Whatever he was exposed to, the effect was immediate. As the women fled into a taxi, he stumbled and gasped for breath, begging for help.

He complained of burning eyes and a severe headache before suffering a seizure and dying in the ambulance en route to hospital.

On Thursday, the alleged agent was arrested over the death. According to Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu Bakar, she had been positively identified from CCTV footage.

She was travelling on a Vietnamese passport in the name of 28-year-old Doan Thi Huong, a false identity.

After her arrest, she is said to have told investigators she was asked to hold a handkerchief on the face of the victim after he had been sprayed by the other woman as part of a “prank”, claimed one report.

place in Ancient Rome

Investigators are hunting several other suspects believed to be involved in what is being described as a classic Cold Warstyle hit.

Cheong Seong-Chang, of the independent Sejong Institute in Seoul, South Korea, said the assassination was “unthinkable without a direct order or approval from Kim Jong-un”.

Jong- nam’s killing was probably motivated by a recent news report that he had sought to defect to the EU, the US or South Korea in 2012.

North Korean officials attempted to block the autopsy on Jong-nam and demanded to take the body back.

For 33-year-old Kim Jong-un, the burial of his half-brother will bring to a triumphant end a long-running saga of jealousy, paranoia and fratricide that would not have seemed out of place in Ancient Rome.

Kim Jong-nam was once the heir apparent, the eldest, albeit illegitimate, son of the “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il by a South Korean actress (who died in mysterious circumstances in Moscow in 2002).

His existence was kept secret by his father for years, and he was not allowed to mix with his siblings from Kim Jong-il’s affairs and marriages.

However, he wanted for nothing, living in a mansion, surrounded by the latest toys from Europe and being driven on jaunts around the North Korean capital in a black Mercedes. At the age of 10 he was sent abroad to study at the International School of Berne in Switzerland, where he became fluent in French.

On his return to North Korea aged 17, Kim Jong-nam enrolled at a university. But his relationship with his father had deteriorated and he blamed his younger half-brother, Kim Jong-un, for taking advantage of his father’s loneliness while he was out of the country.

His spell in Switzerland had also introduced him to life’s luxuries – and to sex. Despite Japan being a sworn enemy of the regime, he would regularly fly to Tokyo using a false passport to indulge his playboy lifestyle in nightclubs, casinos and the city’s red-light district.

The tubby Korean, just 1.58m and weighing 90kg, was a regular at an establishment known as Soap Land, where hostesses charge clients up to £300 (R4 850) an hour.

He lived in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and France, acquiring two wives and a son, before settling in Macau, where his lavish lifestyle was bankrolled by China – a huge power behind the scenes in North Korea.

Beijing saw the exiled brother as a useful asset should it need to attempt to replace the country’s leader with another member of the dynasty.

When Kim Jong-un came to power in 2011 after the Dear Leader’s death, Kim Jong-nam never lost an opportunity to attack his regime, claiming that without reforms North Korea would collapse and decrying the hereditary transition of power.

Recklessly, he encouraged speculation he could replace his half-brother.

Inevitably, North Korea’s intelligence agency, the Reconnaissance General Bureau, saw him as a threat and monitored him closely.

In 2011, there was an attempt on his life in Macau.

North Korea has so far made no comment about a murder that is making headlines around the world.

As police continued with forensic tests, Malaysian authorities declined to return Kim Jong-nam’s body to Pyongyang – perhaps denying his sadistic half-brother the taste of final victory. – Daily Mail