As Malaysian police continue their inquiry into the death of Kim Jong Nam, the outcast half brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, there is plenty of<\/b>
SEOUL\/KUALA LUMPUR \u2013 As Malaysian police continue their inquiry into the death of Kim Jong Nam, the outcast half brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, there is plenty of speculation surrounding one of the stranger killings the world has recently seen.
North Korea killed Kim Jong Nam because he planned to create an exile government around defectors, says one rumor.
Kim Jong Un was furious after learning about secret Chinese plans to enthrone his estranged sibling in Pyongyang if something happens to him, says another.
Or maybe Pyongyang wasn\u2019t involved at all. Perhaps, Kim Jong Nam, known for his carefree lifestyle and gambling habits, angered crime organizations over money problems, say some arguments online.
Some theories are more bizarre. South Korean newspapers have reported on Chinese internet rumors that impeached South Korean President Park Geun-hye, who faces a court ruling on whether she should permanently step down over a corruption scandal, plotted Kim\u2019s death to create a distraction.
South Korea\u2019s spy agency, which has consistently described Kim Jong Un as an irrational and unstable dictator, argues that he killed a nonthreatening sibling out of \u201cparanoia.\u201d
The fuming North Korean ambassador to Kuala Lumpur says the country will reject the autopsy results on Kim Jong Nam because Malaysian officials may be \u201ctrying to conceal something\u201d and \u201ccolluding with hostile forces.\u201d
North Korean diplomats in Malaysia had requested custody of Kim Jong Nam\u2019s body, arguing that he had a North Korean passport, but Malaysian authorities went ahead with the autopsy anyway, saying they had not received a formal complaint.
The autopsy could provide some clarity in the case. Authorities were still awaiting the autopsy results.
Malaysia said Friday that it wants DNA samples from Kim Jong Nam\u2019s family to confirm the body\u2019s identity as part of the postmortem procedure and that officials were not yet willing to hand the body over to the North Koreans.
Although Kim Jong Nam is believed to have fathered two sons and a daughter with two women living in Beijing and Macau, police in Malaysia say no one has come forward to claim the body or provide DNA samples.
\u201cIf there is no claim by next of kin and upon exhausting all avenues (to obtain DNA), we will finally then hand over the body to the embassy\u201d of North Korea, said Abdul Samah Mat, a senior Malaysian police official. He would not say how long that process might take.
While imaginations run freely, most South Korean experts think there is a straightforward explanation behind the alleged assassination of Kim, who appears to have been killed with poison by two women at Kuala Lumpur\u2019s international airport on Monday.
Kim Jong Un, who has executed or purged a slew of high-level officials since taking power in 2011, most likely made another move to remove a potential challenger to his power, the experts say. Kim Jong Nam had been the only member of the Kim clan who regularly talked to foreign journalists, and he sometimes openly criticized the country\u2019s hereditary transfer of power.
North Korea has been seen as tightening control on high-profile citizens overseas since the defection of Thae Yong Ho, a senior North Korean diplomat in London who arrived in South Korea last year.
There is also a possibility that Kim Jong Nam, who continued to stay in Macau and on the Chinese mainland, was taken out because he had disobeyed orders to return home, according to some experts.
But others find North Korea\u2019s involvement hard to believe. Both of the women arrested for suspected involvement in the killing were non-Koreans, and some think their methods were too unorthodox and careless to be considered a North Korean hit job.
The attack on Kim was \u201cunbelievably sloppy,\u201d South Korean lawmaker Kim Jong-dae said in a radio interview. He pointed out that one of the women reportedly was arrested after returning to the scene a day later in the same clothes.
\u201cKim Jong Nam led a free-wheeling life and loved to travel and mingle with women. \u2026 He might have had problems with crime organizations. Or maybe this was a crime based on a love affair gone bad,\u201d he said.
Seo Jae Pyoung, a North Korean defector and anti-Pyongyang activist, thinks it is unlikely that Kim\u2019s death involved crime organizations. While Kim was believed to have profited from helping Chinese firms trade with North Korea when his father, Kim Jong Il, the North\u2019s second leader, was alive, he probably stayed away from risky business activities after Kim Jong Un came to power, Seo said.
While some think the attack on Kim Jong Nam was careless, others see it as ingenious. It is possible that the women might have not even known they were part of an assassination attempt \u2014 one of the detained female suspects reportedly told police she had been tricked into thinking she was part of a TV comedy show prank.
\u201cWhoever did it came up with a careful plan that effectively concealed criminal intent until the job was done,\u201d said Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul\u2019s Dongguk University. \u201cThat person had great understanding of how Western TV media works.\u201d
Getting foreigners to do the job, rather than directly using its own operatives, might have been a logical choice for North Korea so it can deny involvement.
North Korea used its own operatives when it set off a bomb targeting South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan during his 1983 visit to Burma, now known as Myanmar. Although Chun narrowly escaped the blast, more than 20 people were killed, including several of Chun\u2019s Cabinet ministers and top aides. One North Korean agent was shot dead by police, a second one was sentenced to death and executed, and a third reportedly died in a Myanmar prison in 2008.
Burma responded by cutting its diplomatic ties with North Korea, and relations weren\u2019t restored until 2007.
The costly experience of three decades ago might have ensured that North Korea would use borrowed hands for the alleged assassination in Malaysia, which is one of its few diplomatic partners, Koh said.<\/p>\n