Former N Korean spy says alleged assassins look to be amateurs

>> TOKYO: Former North Korean spy Kim Hyon-hui said the alleged assassins of the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un appeared to be amateurs, the Mainichi newspaper reported yesterday.

Kim Jong-nam, the older half-brother of Kim Jong-un, was killed in an apparent assassination on Monday at Kuala Lumpur international airport.

Hyon-hui, who bombed a Korean Air jet in 1987 after being trained as a North Korean agent, told the Japanese newspaper in a written interview that it was unthinkable that the women received strict training.

“I felt suspicious. They don’t seem to have taken strict psychological and physical education and training in North Korea,” Hyon-hui told the paper.

According to Malaysian media reports, the women told police they had been involved in a prank. “They would not have run away if that was the case,” Hyonhui said.

She also emphasised a link with North Korea as the date of the murder was close to the Feb 16 birthday of the late leader Kim Jong-il, father of Jong-un and Jong-nam, and that Jong-il’s nephew Lee Han-young was shot dead on Feb 15, 1997.

Lee, a North Korean defector, was shot and killed in South Korea by two assailants who were never caught but were suspected to be North Korean agents.

Hyon-hui and another North Korean spy planted a bomb on a Korean Air flight in 1987. All 115 crew and passengers were killed when the plane exploded over the Bay of Bengal. Hyon-hui was sentenced to death by a Seoul court but received a presidential pardon in 1990. She won sympathy as someone whom the reclusive North had used as a pawn, but largely dropped out of the public eye after leaving prison.