New York Daily News

KIM BRO SLICE

Gal assassins rub out tyrant’s kin with poison jab

- BY DAN GUNDERMAN and LEONARD GREENE

A PAIR OF assassins used a poison pen to kill the half-brother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, setting off a search for two women after the brazen attack at an airport in Malaysia, according to reports.

According to one South Korean media report — citing unnamed sources — the estranged brother, who had spoken out against the family dynasty, was murdered with a needle containing a chemical spray.

Kim Jong Nam, 46, was in the shopping concourse of Kuala Lumpur Internatio­nal Airport on Monday before a scheduled flight to Macau when he suddenly fell ill, Malaysian officials said. He died in an ambulance while en route to a hospital.

Malaysian police said the victim was carrying a passport identifyin­g him as Kim Chol, a name he’d traveled under before.

“The deceased . . . felt like someone grabbed or held his face from behind,” said Fadzil Ahmat, a Malaysian police official. “He felt dizzy, so he asked for help.”

A South Korean cable news network reported that Kim had been poisoned by two women believed to be North Korean operatives who fled in a taxi.

Kim Jong Nam and Kim Jong Un are sons of former North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, who died in late 2011. They had different mothers.

Kim Jong Nam was the heir apparent until 2001, when he was arrested in Tokyo trying to enter Japan on a fake Dominican Republic passport. He told authoritie­s he was trying to bring his son to Tokyo Disneyland. He had been exiled by his father and went into hiding after his father’s death, likely out of fear that his brother saw him as a threat to the regime.

Kim Jong Nam, who was older, was believed to be close to his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, who was the country’s second most powerful man before being executed on Kim Jong Un’s orders in 2013.

Evans Revere, a former U.S. diplomat and expert on East Asia, told The Associated Press that the brother’s murder was the latest example of Kim Jong Un’s brutality and penchant for eliminatin­g his enemies.

A South Korean think tank claimed at the end of last year that Kim Jong Un ordered the murder of more than 300 people, according to CNN. Kim Jong Nam died just days after North Korea’s latest missile launch.

 ??  ?? North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is under suspicion after killing of half-brother Kim Jong Nam (below) at Malaysia airport.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is under suspicion after killing of half-brother Kim Jong Nam (below) at Malaysia airport.
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