If the Workers’ Party is the brains behind North Korean assassinations, the muscle is the RGB, which formally falls under the military
The bizarre assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s estranged half-brother marks a departure from the isolated country’s repertoire of overseas operations, according to experts on its opaque ruling structures. Kim Jong-nam died last week after being assaulted at the airport in the Malaysian capital with what police believe was a fast-acting poison. The two women who authorities say assaulted him, one Indonesian and the other who carried a Vietnamese passport, are both in custody. South Korea has said that it believes the assassination was coordinated by a shadowy North Korean agency called the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB). The RGB is North Korea’s “premier intelligence organisation”, according to the UN, which sanctioned it in March last year for its role in North Korea’s arms trade. But given the high profile of Kim, who had spoken out publicly against his family’s dynastic control, his murder could have been a joint operation between different agencies, said Michael Madden, an expert on the North Korean leadership. “The RGB is just one of many possibilities. It will take another week at least to pinpoint the organisations involved,” said Madden. On Wednesday, Malaysian police arrested 47-year-old Ri Jong-chol, a North Korean who had a Malaysian work visa for a small herbal medicine firm and lived in Kuala Lumpur with his wife and two children. The use of North Koreans based overseas like Ri has the hallmarks of an operation by elite spy training unit “Office 35”, said Jang Jin-sung, a defector who had worked in the United Front Department of the Workers’ Party, which along with Office 35, is an espionage unit within the ruling party.
