N. Korean leader’s brother slain, says Malaysian offffffffffff icial
KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA — The half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was assassinated at an airport in Kuala Lumpur, telling medical workers before he died that he had been attacked with a chemical spray, a Malaysian official said Tuesday.
Kim Jong Nam, 46, was targeted Monday in the shopping concourse at the airport, where he was preparing to pass through immigration for a flight to Macau, said the senior government offifficial, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case involves sensitive diplomacy.
Kim was taken to the airport clinic and then died on the way to the hospital, the offifficial said.
He was estranged from his younger brother, the North Korean leader. He had been named by outsiders as the likely successor to their dictator father, but reportedly fell out of favor when he was caught trying to enter Japan on a false passport in 2001, saying he wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland. He was believed to have been living recently in Macau, Singapore and Malaysia.
Multiple South Korean m e d i a r e p o r t s , c i t i n g unidentified officials, said Kim Jong Nam was killed by two women believed to be North Korean agents. They flfled in a taxi and were being sought by Malaysian police, the reports said.
A Malaysian police statement confifirmed the death of a 46-year-old North Korean man whom it identifified from his travel document as Kim Chol, born in Pyongyang on June 10, 1970. “Investigation is in progress and a post mortem examination request has been made to ascertain the cause of death,” the statement said.
Ken Gause of the CNA think tank in Washington, who has studied North Korea’s leadership for 30 years, said Kim Chol was a name that Kim traveled under.
Mark Tokola, vice president of the Korea Economic Institute in Washington and a former deputy chief of mission at the U. S. Embassy in Seoul, said it would be surprising if Kim was not killed on the orders of his brother, given that North Korean agents have reportedly tried to assassinate him in the past.
“It seems probable that the motivation for the murder was a continuing sense of paranoia on the part of Kim Jong Un,” Tokola wrote in a commentary Tuesday.
Although there was scant e v i d e n c e t h a t K i m J o n g Nam was plotting against the North Korean leader, he provided an alternative for North Koreans who would want to depose his brother.
In Washington, the State Department said it was aware of reports of Kim’s death but declined to comment, referring questions to Malaysian authorities.
The reported killing came as North Korea celebrated its latest missile launch, which foreign experts were analyzing for evidence of advancement in the country’s missile capabilities.