N.Korea leader's brother murdered in Malaysia

Our region got a shocking glimpse of North Korea's inner conflicts yesterday as half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was assassinated at an airport in Kuala Lumpur.

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Malaysia confirms N.Korea leader's brother assassinated

KUALA LUMPUR - 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 tipped by outsiders to succeed their dictator father, but reportedly fell out of favour 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.

Mark Tokola, vice president of the Korea Economic Institute in Washington and a former deputy chief of mission at the US 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. Although there was scant evidence that Kim Jong Nam was plotting against the North Korean leader, he provided an alternative for North Koreans who would want to depose his brother.

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