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 yet for his flight to Macau, said the senior government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case involves sensitive diplomacy.
He was taken to the airport clinic and then died on the way to the hospital, the official said.
Kim Jong Nam was estranged from his younger brother, the North Korean leader. He had been seen by outsiders as succeeding their dictator father, but reportedly fell out of favor when he was caught trying to enter Japan on a false passport in 2001, saying he wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland. He was believed to have been living recently in Macau, Singapore and Malaysia.
Multiple South Korean media reports, citing unidentified sources, said Kim Jong Nam was killed at the airport by two women believed to be North Korean agents. They fled in a taxi and were being sought by Malaysian police, the reports said.
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 post mortem examination request has been made to ascertain the cause of death,” the statement said.
Ken Gause, at the CNA think tank in Washington, D.C., 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 always unclear for senior North Koreans, Gause said.
Mark Tokola, vice president of the Korea Economic Institute in Washington, D.C., and a former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, 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, referring questions to Malaysian authorities.
The reported killing came as North Korea celebrated its latest missile launch, which foreign experts were analyzing for evidence of advancement in its missile capabilities.
For the next several days, North Korea will be marking the birthday of its late leader Kim Jong Il, the brothers’ father, though they have different mothers. The major holiday this Thursday will be feted with figure skating and synchronized swimming, fireworks and mass rallies.
Since taking power in late 2011, Kim Jong Un has executed or purged a slew of high-level government officials.