The two assassins, agents of the North’s spy agency, the Reconnaissance General Bureau, carried out the attack on Monday by taking advantage of a security loophole between Jong-nam’s bodyguards and Malaysian police at the airport.
Advertisement
The man was seen struggling for help and sought assistance from airport staff, he said.
“It’s another sign that Kim Jong Un is asserting his control over the regime – rather than the regime descending into chaos”, said Anwita Basu, lead analyst for North Korea at the Economist Intelligence Unit, in London. 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 who reportedly attended Eric Clapton concerts in London in 2015. He was Jong-Il’s eldest son, and his mother was the actress Sung Hae-Rim.
Kim, who held senior positions within the North Korean government at the time, allegedly told police that he simply wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland, ahead of being deported to Pyongyang, China, TIME reported in 2011.
Medical workers have completed an autopsy on Kim Jong-nam. Police said Kim had been sprayed in the face with an unidentified liquid before complaining of “extreme pain” and being rushed to hospital, where he died.
The man who died at the airport on Monday was carrying documents identifying him as 46-year-old Kim Chol, according to Malaysian police.
While he later criticized North Korea’s dynastic succession, he is said to have written to Kim Jong-un in 2012 asking to be spared along with his family. He was waiting to board a flight to Macau, according to Malaysian national news agency Bernama.
Kim Jong Un attended a ceremony in Pyongyang on Wednesday commemorating the 75th birthday of his late father, Kim Jong Il, according to state broadcaster Korean Central TV.
In an email exchange with a Japanese journalist published in 2012, Jong Nam spoke disparagingly of Jong Un, saying he lacked “any sense of duty or seriousness” and warned that bribery and corruption would lead to North Korea’s eventual collapse.
“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. One of them said Kim Jong-nam also had a wife and son in Beijing.
Kim Jong Nam, 45, who had lived outside North Korea for years, was reported to have been killed by poison needle by two women who fled the scene by taxi, the reports said.
Hoang was “positively identified from the CCTV footage at the airport and was alone at the time of arrest”, Malaysian police said in a statement released Wednesday. Kim was the half brother of Kim Jong Un, who was born in 1985.
Mr Kim went into hiding in Malaysia after the execution in December 2013 of his uncle, Jang Song-thaek, the once-powerful uncle of the current leader.
Advertisement
News of the murder comes two days after Kim Jong Un test-fired a ballistic missile as part of efforts to develop North Korea’s nuclear-weapons capability.
