He was fearless: He said publicly that he opposed his younger half-brother, Kim Jong-un’s ascension to supreme rule in North Korea.
Advertisement
“I’m his half brother, but I’ve never met him so I don’t know”, Kim Jong Nam said in another note to Gomi. However, Malaysia went ahead with the procedure despite Pyongyang’s objection as the nation had not submitted a formal protest, a senior Malaysian police official Abdul Samah Mat said.
South Korea’s government has said North Korea also executed a vice premier for education in 2016 for unspecified anti-revolutionary and factional acts, and a defense minister in 2015 for complaining and sleeping during a meeting.
Kim Jong Nam was not in the country at the time, but Kim Jong Un gave a standing order for his assassination shortly thereafter, according to South Korea’s National Intelligence Service. 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 wife of his executed uncle – appears to have fallen from favor or died.
Police earlier told Reuters that an unidentified man had died en route to hospital from Kuala Lumpur airport. “The deceased. felt like someone grabbed or held his face from behind”. “He felt dizzy, so he asked for help at the. counter of KLIA”. “He was put into an ambulance and was being taken to the Putrajaya Hospital when he was pronounced dead”.
“There was one attempt on his life, in 2012, and Jong-nam in April 2012 sent a letter to Jong-un saying “Please spare me and my family”, Kim Byung-ki, a member of South Korea’s parliamentary intelligence committee told reporters.
South Korea’s foreign ministry said it could not confirm the reports on Chosun regarding the two female spies.
North Korean assassins reportedly tried to shoot Kim Jong Nam in Macau in 2011, though the details of the attempted killing are murky.
The NIS cited Kim Jong Un’s alleged “paranoia” about his half brother.
As the first-born son of Kim Jong Il, Kim was seen for years as the natural successor to his father but in 2001, he was arrested after being caught at Tokyo’s Narita airport with a fake Dominican Republic passport.
Kim Jong Nam did not attend his father’s funeral.
The assassination was the highest-profile death under the Kim Jong-un regime since the execution of the leader’s uncle Jang Song-thaek in December 2013.
“We are very interested in the progress of the case”, the spokesman said, while adding that he can not confirm whether Kim’s family resides in Macau, a special administrative region of China.
The Kim clan has ruled North Korea for three generations, starting with Kim Il Sung, and its embrace of dynastic succession is unique among communist countries.
“Loyalists may have wanted to get rid of him”, he said.
The 45-year-old said he “personally opposed” the hereditary power transfer in his own family, during an interview with Japan’s Asahi TV in 2010.
“North Korean society is just the reign of terror”.
Advertisement
Jong-nam has been targeted in the past. He spent most of his time overseas in Macau, mainland China and Singapore.
