Attacker at airport kills half-brother of Kim Jong Un
Kim Jong Nam was once heir apparent
The older half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un died after being attacked at Kuala Lumpur International Airport by a woman who covered his face with a liquid, Malaysian police said Tuesday, in what appears to have been an assassination carried out by a North Korean agent.
Malaysian police official Fadzil Ahmat told Bernama, a Malaysian news site, that the victim was Kim Jong Nam, who was at the airport to catch a flight to Macau, China, when he was attacked.
“While waiting for the flight, a woman came from behind and covered his face with a cloth laced with a liquid,” Fadzil said. “Following this, the man was seen struggling for help and managed to obtain the assistance of (an airport) receptionist as his eyes suffered burns as a result of the liquid. Moments later, he was sent to the Putrajaya Hospital, where he was confirmed dead.”
Kim Jong Nam, 46, was the eldest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and was at one time the heir apparent to rule the isolated country, which has been governed by three generations of the Kim family.
In 2001, he was arrested at Tokyo’s Narita Airport after trying to enter Japan on a forged passport from the Dominican Republic. He told police he wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland.
After falling out of favor with his father, Kim Jong Nam lived in exile in Macau, a Chinese island known as a gambling mecca. In emails to the Japanese newspaper Tokyo Shimbun, he said the rift had grown because he insisted on reforms. “After I went back to North Korea following my education in Switzerland, I grew further apart from my father because I insisted on reform and market-opening and was eventually viewed with suspicion,” he wrote.
Kim Jong Nam criticized North Korea’s dynastic succession and said he had no interest in running the country, which remains in the iron grip of his 33year-old half-brother. There have been reports of assassination attempts on Kim Jong Nam.
Joel Wit, a senior fellow at the U.S.-Korea Institute at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, said it is difficult to read anything into the timing of Monday’s death, but Kim Jong Nam had long been viewed as a potential threat by his half-brother.
“He was living overseas and was critical of the regime, and he was a potential figure around which any opposition could rally,” Wit said.