Intelligence officials believe North Korean agents assassinated leader Kim Jong Un’s exiled half brother, but if the whodunit seems settled, a very big question still looms: Why now? Kim Jong Nam, reportedly killed by two female agents in a cloak-and-dagger operation in…
FILE – This combination of file photos shows Kim Jong Nam, left, exiled half brother of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un, in Narita, Japan, on May 4, 2001, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on May 9, 2016, in Pyongyang, North Korea. Kim Jong Nam, 46, was targeted Monday, Feb. 13, 2017, in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia, and later died on the way to the hospital according to a Malaysian government official. (AP Photos/Shizuo Kambayashi, Wong Maye-E, File)
(The Associated Press)
FILE – This May 4, 2001, file photo shows Kim Jong Nam, exiled half brother of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un, escorted by Japanese police officers at the airport in Narita, Japan. Kim Jong Nam, 46, was targeted Monday, Feb. 13, 2017, in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia, and later died on the way to the hospital, according to a Malaysian government official. (AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye, File)
(The Associated Press)
SEOUL, South Korea – Intelligence officials believe North Korean agents assassinated leader Kim Jong Un’s exiled half brother, but if the whodunit seems settled, a very big question still looms: Why now?
Kim Jong Nam, reportedly killed by two female agents in a cloak-and-dagger operation in a Malaysian airport, had long been an embarrassment to North Korea’s government — humiliated during a failed attempt to sneak into Japan to visit Disneyland and outspoken in opposing the rise to power of his brother, who had his uncle executed after taking over.
But the overweight gambler and fading playboy had kept his head down in recent years from his base in Macau. Kim Jong Nam was seen by many outsiders as only a minor distraction for North Korea’s leaders, and certainly not an existential threat worth the risk of a potentially embarrassing assassination caper on foreign soil.
The spotty South Korean intelligence community ascribed the North’s motivation in killing Kim Jong Nam, without any elaboration, simply to Kim Jong Un’s “paranoia. ” There is a more intriguing possibility floating around Seoul, however: The tipping point in North Korea’s bloody calculations may have been a largely ignored South Korean news story from last week.
