SEOUL: The half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has been assassinated in Malaysia, South Korean media reported Tuesday, with one TV station saying he was attacked at the country’s main airport with poisoned needles.
Officials in Seoul could not be reached for comment on the reported death of Kim Jong-Nam. Malaysian police said an unidentified Korean had been taken sick at Kuala Lumpur International Airport and since died. If confirmed, Kim Jong-Nam’s case would be the highest-profile death under the Kim Jong-Un regime since the execution of the leader’s uncle Jang Song-Thaek in December 2013.
Kim Jong-Un has been trying to strengthen his grip on power in the face of growing international pressure over his country’s nuclear and missile programmes. He has reportedly staged a series of executions. The latest launch on Sunday of a new intermediate-range missile brought UN Security Council condemnation and vows of a strong response from US President Donald Trump.
South Korea’s national news agency Yonhap quoted a Seoul government source as saying Kim Jong-Nam was killed on Monday. Another source cited by Yonhap said agents of the North’s spy agency, the Reconnaissance General Bureau, carried out the assassination by taking advantage of a security loophole between Jong-Nam’s bodyguards and Malaysian police at the airport. The 45-year-old was killed by two unidentified female agents using poisoned needles at the airport, according to South Korean broadcaster TV Chosun.
That report, citing what it called multiple government sources, said the two women hailed a cab and fled immediately afterwards. In Malaysia, the police chief in charge of Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Assistant Commissioner Abdul Aziz Ali, told AFP a Korean in his forties was found sick at the airport on Monday. Airport authorities rushed him to hospital and he died on the way, the police chief said. “We do not have any other details of this Korean man. We do not know his identity,” Abdul said.
Kim Jong-Nam, the eldest son of Kim Jong-Il, was once seen as heir apparent but fell out of favour following an embarrassing botched attempt in 2001 to enter Japan on a forged passport and visit Disneyland. He has since lived in virtual exile, mainly in the Chinese territory of Macau. Jong-Nam’s half-brother Jong-Un took over as North Korean leader when their father died in December 2011.
Jong-Nam, known as an advocate of reform in the North, once told a Japanese newspaper that he opposed his country’s dynastic power transfers. He was reportedly close to his uncle Jang Song-Thaek, once the North’s unofficial number two and political mentor of the current leader. Jong-Nam has been targeted in the past.