Police launch investigation over death of Kim Jong-nam, who was tipped to succeed father as ruler of North Korea before he fell out of favour

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The estranged half-brother of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has died in Malaysia, police have confirmed, after he told authorities he had been attacked in the shopping concourse at Kuala Lumpur airport.

Kim Jong-nam, who was 45 years old, died on his way to hospital after seeking help at an information desk because he felt dizzy, Malalysian police said. He said he had been attacked by an unknown assailant, and police have ordered a postmortem.

Both South Korean and US government sources believe Kim was murdered by North Korean agents, Reuters news agency reported. Poison-pen devices have been found on would-be North Korean assassins in the past, and a US government official said a similar device could not be ruled out.

Kim had been planning to travel to Macau, where he is believed to have a home and family, when he fell ill at the low-cost terminal of Kuala Lumpur international airport (KLIA), police official Fadzil Ahmat told Reuters.

“The deceased ... felt like someone grabbed or held his face from behind,” Fadzil said. “We don’t know if there was a cloth or needles. The receptionist said someone grabbed his face, he felt dizzy.”

Kim was taken to an airport clinic, where medical staff ordered an ambulance, but he died on his way to hospital. A postmortem will be carried out and police have launched an investigation, although they do not yet have any suspects, Ahmat said.

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Malaysia is one of the few countries to maintain cordial ties with North Korea, and nationals of both countries enjoy visa-free travel, potentially making any killers harder to track down.



South Korea’s TV Chosun, a cable-TV network, reported that Kim had been poisoned by two women believed to be North Korean operatives, and the Yonhap news agency reported that the suspects in Kim’s death fled the scene in a taxi.

Kim, the eldest son of the late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, had been considered his father’s designated successor until a bizarre incident in 2001 when he was exposed trying to sneak into Japan on a fake passport. He claimed at the time that he wanted to visit Disneyland.

The publicity surrounding the event reportedly infuriated the older Kim, and Kim Jong-nam was shunted aside in favour of his younger brother. He is thought to have lived in exile for years, and unlike other relatives did not hold an official title or play any part in governing North Korea.

He chose a largely private life, but his few public comments included blunt criticism. Just weeks into his younger half-brother’s rule, he reportedly described the regime as “a joke to the outside world” and said he opposed the hereditary transfer of power in the country.

Those comments appeared in a book by Yoji Gomi, a journalist with the Japanese newspaper the Tokyo Shimbun, who said he had exchanged emails with Kim Jong-nam over seven years.

In a statement on Tuesday, Malaysian police said the dead man held a passport under the name Kim Chol, but all the Kim family regularly travel under pseudonyms.

If confirmed that North Korean operatives were responsible for Kim’s death, it would be the highest-profile killing connected with the Pyongyang regime since Kim Jong-un ordered the arrest and execution of his uncle and close adviser, Jang Song-thaek, in December 2013.

Kim Jong-un is thought to have presided over several purges, including executions, since becoming leader. And for many years North Korea is known to have targeted defectors and critics overseas, including relatives of the ruling family.

In 1997 Lee Han-young, a cousin of the Kim brothers, who had defected, was shot and killed by North Korean agents in Seoul, according to South Korea.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kim Jong-nam dressed in an army uniform poses with his maternal grandmother in January 1975. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Regime agents also have a track record of deploying covert weapons that might not seem out of place in a James Bond film. In 2012, a former member of the North Korean special forces was found guilty in South Korea of attempting to kill Park Sang-hak, a leading anti-North Korean activist..

The would-be killer had been arrested in possession of a torch that doubled as a gun, a fountain pen capable of firing a bladed projectile, and a pen that concealed a poison-tipped needle.

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Kim Jong-nam had claimed to have no interest in taking power. “Personally I am against third-generation succession,” he told Japan’s Asahi TV in 2010, before his younger brother had succeeded their father. “I hope my younger brother will do his best for the sake of North Koreans’ prosperous lives.”

But his younger brother may still have feared he could serve as a possible leadership candidate, particularly for a faction seeking a change of leadership but not wholesale overthrow of the current regime.

Kim Jong-nam’s death comes days after the regime came under renewed international pressure following the test-launch of a medium-to-long-range ballistic missile to coincide with Donald Trump’s summit with the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe.

Kim Jong-nam’s mother is Sung Hae-rim, a South Korean-born actor who died in 2002, possibly in Moscow. She was never married to Kim Jong-il. The Korean leader has one surviving brother, an Eric Clapton fan who is thought to serve in the Pyongyang government.