Slain with needles
News accounts say women used poisoned needles
The estranged half brother of Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, is reportedly assassinated in Malaysia by two women who stabbed him with poisoned needles.
SEOUL, South Korea — The estranged half brother of Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, was assassinated in Malaysia on Monday by two women who stabbed him with poisoned needles, a South Korean all-news channel reported on Tuesday.
U.S. intelligence officials corroborated the report that Kim Jong Nam, 45, had been killed by female assassins at the airport in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, where he apparently had been awaiting a flight to Macau. The officials did not know the cause of death.
Attackers fled in taxi
The South Korean news channel, TV Chosun, said in its account that the assailants fled in a taxi after the attack and that the local police were searching for them. The Yonhap News Agency of South Korea also reported the assassination without any detail.
The Royal Malaysia Police said in a statement that a North Korean man they identified as Kim Chol — an alias that South Korean officials said had been used by Kim Jong Nam — died en route to a hospital on Monday after seeking medical assistance at the airport.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service and its Unification Ministry said they could not immediately confirm the reports of the half brother’s death.
The reports come amid a period of turmoil in the upper ranks of North Korea’s leadership. The chief of the North’s powerful secret police, long considered the right-hand man for Kim Jong Un, was recently dismissed on charges of corruption and abuse of power, according to the South Korean government.
Kim Jong Nam, the eldest son of the deceased North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, was once considered the heir to power in the dynastic regime in Pyongyang. But he was believed to have hobbled his chance when he was caught in 2001 while trying to take his son to Tokyo Disneyland with a fake visa. He was detained for several days before being deported to China.
Other analysts in South Korea say that Kim Jong Nam fell out of the succession race after his mother, Sung Hae Rim, was rejected by the North Korean leader, who favored Kim Jong Un’s mother, Ko Young Hee. Ko and Kim Jong Il had another son, Kim Jong Chol, who was seen at an Eric Clapton concert in London in 2015.
North Korea began actively grooming Kim Jong Un as heir after his father had a stroke in 2008. As his youngest brother consolidated his power, Kim Jong Nam lived in semi-exile abroad. Until recently, he had sometimes been seen in Macau. TV Chosun said he had also been visiting Singapore and Malaysia, where he had girlfriends.
Kim Jong Nam had a son named Kim Han Sol, who used to study in Bosnia and later France. In an interview with a European television channel in 2012, the son said he did not know how his uncle, Kim Jong Un, “became a dictator.”
Support from China
Like his half brother, Kim Jong Nam spent time in Switzerland as a teenager.
Kim was once questioned in Macau by a reporter about the likelihood that his brother would take over the leadership of North Korea, and he seemed to accept his fate.
“It is my father’s decision,” he said. “So, once he decides, we have to support.”
Kim Jong Nam also once predicted doom for his half brother’s rule while talking to reporters from Japan, North Korea’s sworn enemy. His criticism had fueled speculation that China and certain generals in Pyongyang might be protecting him in case anything should go wrong with Kim Jong Un’s rule.
China had been supporting Kim Jong Nam financially for many years in the event of Kim Jong Un’s death.
“Kim Jong Nam is a person which China can control, and the North Korean people can trust,” said writer Kang Chunnu, a distant relative of the Kim family.