One of the alleged female assassins behind the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s half brother was wearing pink tights and a sweater emblazoned with ‘LOL’ newly released CCTV images show.
Two women are being hunted over the murder of Kim Jong-nam, 45, who told medical workers he had been attacked with a chemical spray before he died on the way to hospital on Monday.
One person has been arrested in relation to the murder at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
A statement from the Royal Malaysia Police said the “female suspect was in possession of a socialist republic of Vietnam travel document”.
Jong-nam was targeted at the budget terminal of Kuala Lumpur International Airport, said a senior Malaysian government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as the case involves sensitive diplomacy.
Multiple South Korean media reports, citing unidentified sources, said Jong-nam was killed by two women believed to be North Korean agents who fled in a taxi and were being sought by Malaysian police, the Associated Press reports.
News of the apparent assassination rippled across Asia on Wednesday as Malaysian investigators scoured airport surveillance video for clues about two female suspects.
Malaysian officials have provided few other details about why they believe Jong-nam died in a targeted killing. Police said an autopsy was planned to determine the cause of death.
Since taking power in late 2011, Kim Jong Un has executed or purged a slew of high-level government officials in what the South Korean government has described as a “reign of terror”.
South Korea’s spy service said Wednesday that North Korea had been trying for five years to kill Jong-nam.
The National Intelligence Service did not definitively say that North Korea was behind the killing, just that it was presumed to be a North Korean operation, according to lawmakers who briefed reporters about the closed door meeting with the spy officials.
The NIS cited Kim Jong Un’s alleged “paranoia” about his half brother. Still, the agency has a history of botching intelligence on North Korea and has long sought to portray the country’s leaders as mentally unstable.
Police were searching for clues in the closed circuit television footage from the airport, said Selangor police chief Abdul Samah Mat. The airport is in Selangor, near Kuala Lumpur.
According to the Malaysian government official,Jong-nam was in a shopping concourse and had not yet gone through security for a planned flight to Macau when the incident occurred.
Jong-nam was estranged from his half brother, the North Korean leader. Although he had been originally tipped by some outsiders as a possible successor to his late dictator father, Kim Jong Il, others thought that was unlikely because he lived outside the country, including recently in Macau, Singapore and Malaysia.
He reportedly fell further out of favour when he was caught trying to enter Japan on a false passport in 2001, saying he wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland.
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.
Ken Gause, who is with the CNA think tank in Washington and has studied North Korea’s leadership for 30 years, said Kim Chol was a name that Jong-nam had traveled under.
He is believed to have been born May 10, 1971.
While the most likely explanation for the killing was that Kim Jong Un was removing a potential challenger to North Korean leadership within his own family, he could also be sending a warning to North Korean officials to demonstrate the reach of the regime. It follows the defection last year of a senior diplomat from the North Korean Embassy in London who has spoken of his despair at Kim’s purges.
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 Jong-nam was not killed on the orders of his half brother, given that North Korean agents have reportedly tried to assassinate 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 Jong-nam was plotting against the North Korean leader, he provided an alternative for North Koreans who would want to depose his half brother.
Among Kim Jong Un’s executions and purgings, the most spectacular was the 2013 execution of his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, once considered the country’s second-most powerful man, for what the North alleged was treason.
Gause said Jong-nam had been forthright that he did not have political ambitions, although he was publicly critical of the North Korean regime and his half brother’s legitimacy in the past.
Jong-nam had been less outspoken since 2011, when North Korean assassins reportedly tried to shoot him in Macau, Gause said, though the details of the attempted killing are murky. South Korea also reportedly jailed a North Korean spy in 2012 who admitted to trying to organize a hit-and-run accident targeting Nam in China in 2010.
Despite the attempts on his life, Jong-nam had reportedly traveled to North Korea since then, so it was assumed he was no longer under threat. Nam may have become more vulnerable, as his defender in the North Korean hierarchy, Kim Kyong Hui - Kim Jong Un’s aunt and the wife of his executed uncle - appears to have fallen from favor or died. She has not been seen in public for more than three years, Gause said.
Kim Jong Il had at least three sons with two women, as well as a daughter by a third. Jong-nam was the eldest, followed by Kim Jong Chul, who is a few years older than Kim Jong Un and is known as a playboy who reportedly attended Eric Clapton concerts in London in 2015. It’s unclear what position he has in the North Korean government.
A younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, was named a member of the Workers’ Party of Korea’s Central Committee during a North Korean party congress last May. She has a position in a propaganda and agitation department and is known as Kim Jong Un’s gatekeeper, Gause said.