KL to review trade with Pyongyang

KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian government has decided to review trade with North Korea at its Cabinet meeting today in the aftermath of the Feb 13 murder of the estranged half-brother of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un, according to local media.

The Southeast Asian country is expected to consider whether to impose an embargo on Pyongyang, with their once-cosy relations sharply deteriorating over the handling of the apparent assassination of Kim Jong-nam with the VX nerve agent at a Kuala Lumpur airport.

North Korea is believed by many to have orchestrated the attack on Kim, the halfbrother of Kim Jong-un, which was carried out by a Vietnamese women and an Indonesian woman in the departures area of the airport’s budget terminal, Malaysian authorities have said.

The ambassadors of Malaysia and North Korea have already departed their host nations and the two governments said on Tuesday they have temporarily prohibited each other’s citizens from leaving their countries following the murder.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, however, said on Wednesday that his country will not cut diplomatic ties with North Korea in a bid to maintain their diplomatic route in proceeding with the probe into the case and ensuring the safety of citizens.

Malaysia has continued trade relations with North Korea, to where it exports natural rubber and palm oil and from where it imports inorganic chemicals and rare earths, analysts say.

Kim Jong-nam was known to have criticized North Korea’s hereditary succession in an interview with a Japanese newspaper.

Two Malaysian UN employees were allowed to leave North Korea yesterday, a spokeswoman for the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said, while the Malaysian government negotiated for a travel ban to be lifted on nine citizens still stranded there. North Korea had barred Malaysians from leaving on Tuesday, sparking tit-for-tat action by Malaysia as diplomatic tensions escalated. The nine remaining Malaysians are at the embassy in Pyongyang, unable to leave the country. Malaysia has begun negotiations with North Korea to lift the travel ban and allow its citizens to return home. Meanwhile, the two Malaysian WFP employees had reached Beijing.

“WFP confirms that two WFP staff of Malaysian nationality have left DPR Korea and arrived in Beijing today,” Frances Kennedy, spokeswoman at the WFP headquarters in Italy, said.

The UN has called for calm between Malaysia and North Korea and urged them to settle their differences.