Kim Jong-nam ‘was spying for South Korea’

SINCE his face was smeared with nerve agent in Kuala Lumpur airport, mystery has surrounded the hit job that brought down the half-brother of Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader.

But new revelations suggest the murdered one-time heir to the North’s despotic regime had been working for the intelligence agency of Pyongyang’s main enemy: South Korea.

Kim Jong-nam was long believed to have fallen out of favour with the regime at home, having been forced into exile after being caught with a fake passport en route to Tokyo Disneyland.

Since his murder and the trial of the two young women who applied VX nerve agent to his face on a piece of cloth, suspicions have also been raised about connections to the CIA.

But now current and former officials at South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) claim Kim was using connections in the North to feed information to the South on matters such as his half-brother’s health and nuclear ambitions – and that he was paid for doing so.

“Kim provided the NIS with information on trends within the government and the powers of the regime’s most high-ranking officials, including Kim Jong-un, for five or six years before his death,” Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS) reported.

They added that Kim “raised the question of the possibility of asylum in South Korea”, although the South Korean side apparently hoped to avoid that on grounds “it would put considerable burden on inter-korean relations”.

SBS reported that NIS agents were in regular contact with Kim Jong-nam when he travelled outside Macau.