Kim Jong-nam’s executioners pounced during a lapse in security, possibly revealed by Facebook
EXOTIC locations. Fancy hotels. Kim Jong-nam wasn’t shy about sharing his lavish lifestyle. But such social media boasts may have tipped his assassins off.
EXOTIC locations. Fancy hotels. Kim Jong-nam wasn’t shy about sharing his high-flying lifestyle. But his social media boasts may have tipped his assassins off.
The New York Post reports the globetrotting playboy was living under the alias Kim Chol. That was the name on his passport. It was also his Facebook profile.
Recent photos show him outside a Wynn hotel and a Casino Oriental, and posing in front of the skylines of Macau and Shanghai.
All provide a trail — and timeline — of his movements.
“Open activities like these do not look like they are coming from a person who is constantly under death threats,” South Korean Intelligence Secretary Cha Du-hyeogn told The Telegraph.
“I think it is possible that Kim was careless, leading to his unsuspecting death.”
The 45-year-old was poisoned while he waited for a flight to Macau, China, at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Two women, believed to be North Korean agents, have been implicated in his death.
Kim Jong-nam’s body is returning to Pyongyang, home of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, the half-brother who almost certainly ordered his assassination, Malaysian authorities said, as police held two women and a man.
The man was believed to be the boyfriend of Siti Aishah, 25, from Serang, Indonesia, police said last night. She was arrested at 2am yesterday (5am AEDT) after she was identified by CCTV footage at Kuala Lumpur’s airport.
Doan Thi Huong, 28, from Nam Dinh, Vietnam, was arrested on Wednesday at the airport budget departure hall where Kim Jong-nam was attacked on Monday by two women who sprayed or splashed a poisonous liquid on him.
Investigators are trying to piece together the details of a death that set off a torrent of speculation over whether Kim Jong Un dispatched a hit squad to kill his estranged older sibling.
The suspects were picked up separately on Wednesday and Thursday.
The female suspects were identified using surveillance footage from Kuala Lumpur International Airport, where Kim Jong-nam suddenly fell ill Monday morning before dying on the way to the hospital.
One of the women had Vietnamese travel documents and the other held an Indonesian passport.
Indonesia’s foreign ministry has confirmed the arrest of a female national in connection with the killing.
A still photo of the airport surveillance video showed one of the suspects in a white T-shirt with “LOL” across the front.
On Thursday night, police said they had detained a Malaysian man believed to be the boyfriend of the Indonesian suspect.
An autopsy has been concluded and could reveal whether Kim Jong-nam was poisoned, and possibly shed light on the tales of intrigue that have rippled since his death: the female assassins, the broad daylight killing, the estranged dictator-sibling looking to kill a man known for his drinking, gambling and complicated family life.
Kim Jong Nam, who was 45 or 46, was estranged from his North Korean relatives and had been living abroad for years. He reportedly fell out of favour with his father when he was caught trying to enter Japan on a false passport in 2001, saying he wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland.
According to two senior Malaysian government officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Kim Jong Nam told medical workers before he died that he had been attacked with a chemical spray.
Since taking power upon his father’s death in late 2011, Kim Jong Un has executed or purged a number of high-level government officials in what the South Korean government has described as a “reign of terror.” South Korea’s spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, said that North Korea had been trying for five years to kill Kim Jong Nam.
The NIS also cited a “genuine” attempt by North Korea to kill Kim Jong Nam in 2012, lawmakers said. The NIS told them that Kim Jong Nam sent a letter to Kim Jong Un in April 2012, after the assassination attempt, begging for the lives of himself and his family.
Medical workers completed an autopsy late Wednesday, but it was not immediately clear if or when Malaysia would release the findings publicly. North Korea had objected to the autopsy and asked for Kim Jong Nam’s body to be returned; Malaysia went ahead with the procedure anyway as the North did not submit a formal protest, said Abdul Samah Mat, a senior Malaysian police official.
Also Wednesday, police arrested the first suspect in the case, a woman carrying Vietnamese travel documents bearing the name Doan Thi Huong. She was picked up at the budget terminal of Kuala Lumpur International Airport, where Kim Jong Nam fell ill on Monday morning. It was not immediately clear whether the passport was genuine.
She was identified using earlier surveillance video from the airport, police said.
Still photos of the video, confirmed as authentic by police, showed a woman in a skirt and long-sleeved white T-shirt with “LOL” emblazoned across the front.
According to two senior Malaysian government officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case involves sensitive diplomacy, the elder Kim died en route to a hospital on Monday after suddenly falling ill at the airport’s budget terminal.
He told medical workers before he died that he had been attacked with a chemical spray at the airport, the Malaysian officials said. Multiple South Korean media reports, citing unidentified sources, said two women believed to be North Korean agents killed him with some kind of poison before fleeing in a taxi. Police said they were hunting for more suspects. No further details were released.
The NIS also cited a “genuine” attempt by North Korea to kill Kim Jong Nam in 2012, the politicians said. The NIS told them that Kim Jong Nam sent a letter to Kim Jong Un in April 2012, after the assassination attempt, begging for the lives of himself and his family.
The letter said: “I hope you cancel the order for the punishment of me and my family. We have nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, and we know that the only way to escape is committing suicide.” Although Kim Jong Nam 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. He also frequented casinos, five-star hotels and travelled around Asia, with little say in North Korean affairs.
But his attempt to visit Tokyo Disneyland reportedly soured North Korea’s leadership on his potential as a successor. Kim Jong Nam had said he had no political ambitions, although he was publicly critical of the North Korean regime and his half brother’s legitimacy in the past. In 2010, he was quoted in Japanese media as saying he opposed dynastic succession in North Korea. Among Kim Jong Un’s executions and purges, 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.
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