Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
North Korean leader’s half brother killed
Kim Jong Nam died after an attack at a Malaysian airport on Monday, officials say.
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 and had not gone through immigration for his flight to Macau, said the senior government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
He was taken to the airport clinic and died on the way to the hospital, the official said.
Kim Jong Nam was estranged from his younger brother, the North Korean leader. Kim Jong Nam had been the heir apparent to North Korean leadership until 2001, when he was arrested in Tokyo trying to enter Japan on a false Dominican Republic passport. He told authorities he was trying to bring his son to Tokyo Disneyland
He was believed to have been living recently in Macau, Singapore and Malaysia.
Multiple South Korean media reports said Kim Jong Nam was killed at the airport by two women.
TV Chosun, citing “multiple government sources,” said the women were believed to be North Korean agents. It said they fled in a taxi and were being sought by Malaysian police.
Another report said he had been killed by a poison needle.
By whichever method, the killing had all the hallmarks of a North Korean assassination.
“This sounds like a classic North Korean operation,” said Sue Mi Terry, who was a senior North Korea analyst for the CIA from 2001 to 2008. “Kim Jong Nam was the most reform-minded person in the family and whenever there are discussions about regime change, his name comes up.”
A Malaysian police statement confirmed the death of a 46-year-old North Korean man whom it identified from his travel document as Kim Chol, born in Pyongyang on June 10, 1970.
“Investigation is in progress and a postmortem examination request has been made to ascertain the cause of death,” the statement said.
Ken Gause, at the CNA think tank in Washington who has studied North Korea’s leadership for 30 years, said Kim Chol was a name that Kim Jong Nam has traveled under. He is believed to have been born May 10, 1971, although birthdays are unclear for senior North Koreans, Gause said.
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, South Korea, said it would be surprising if Kim Jong Nam was not killed on the orders of his brother, given that North Korean agents have reportedly tried to assassinate Kim Jong Nam 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.
In Washington, the State Department said it was aware of reports of Kim Jong Nam’s death but declined to comment.
The 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.
North Korea is set to soon mark the birthday of its late leader Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Nam and Kim Jong Un’s father. They have different mothers. The holiday Thursday is called “Day of the Shining Star.”
Since taking power in late 2011, Kim Jong Un has executed or purged a slew of high-level government officials in what the South Korean government has described as a “reign of terror.”
Those deaths include the 2013 execution by anti-aircraft fire of his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, once considered the country’s secondmost-powerful man.
Gause said Kim Jong Nam had been forthright that he did not have political ambitions, although he was critical of the North Korean regime and his brother’s legitimacy in the past.
Kim Jong Nam had been less outspoken since 2011, when North Korean assassins reportedly tried to shoot him in Macau, Gause said.
South Korea also reportedly jailed a North Korean spy in 2012 who admitted to trying to organize a hit-andrun incident targeting Kim Jong Nam in China in 2010.
Despite the attempts on his life, Kim Jong Nam had reportedly traveled to North Korea since then, so it was assumed he was no longer under threat.
Kim Jong Nam may have become more vulnerable as his defender in the North Korean hierarchy, Kim Kyong Hui — Kim Jong Un’s aunt and the husband of his assassinated uncle, Jang Song Thaek — appears to have fallen from favor or died. She has not been seen in for more than three years, Gause said.
Kim Jong Il had at least three sons with two women, as well as a daughter by a third. Kim Jong Nam was the eldest, followed by Kim Jong Chul, who is a few years older than Kim Jong Un and is known as a playboy. It’s unclear what position he has in the government.
A younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, was named a member of the Workers’ Party of Korea’s Central Committee during a North Korean party congress in May. She has a position in a propaganda and agitation department in the committee.