Assassination of Kim Jong-nam
On 13 February 2017, Kim Jong-nam, the older half-brother of the dictator of North Korea Kim Jong Un, was assassinated at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia. He had been living abroad since his exile from North Korea in 2003.
Assassination of Kim Jong-nam
13 February 2017
Kim Jong-nam
One convicted of "voluntarily causing injuries by dangerous weapons or means"
Following his visit to the resort island Langkawi, Kim Jong-nam arrived at terminal 2 sometime before 9:00 a.m. to take a 10:50 a.m. AirAsia flight to Macau. At approximately 9:00 a.m., two women sprayed Kim Jong-nam with the VX nerve agent. He died about 15 to 20 minutes later while being transported to the hospital.
The women were identified as Siti Aisyah from Indonesia and Đoàn Thị Hương from Vietnam. Both were charged with the murder of Kim Jong-nam. The murder charges were eventually dropped, although Hương pled guilty to a lesser charge of "voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons or means" and received a sentence of three years and four months. She was released from prison on 3 May 2019.
It is widely believed that Kim Jong-nam was murdered on the orders of Kim Jong Un.[1][2][3] Four North Korean suspects, later confirmed as spies, left the airport shortly after the assassination and reached Pyongyang without being arrested. Other North Koreans were arrested but were released without charge.
Attack[edit]
Kim Jong-nam arrived in Malaysia on 6 February 2017, traveling to the resort island of Langkawi on 8 February.[4][5] On 13 February, at about 9 am,[6] he was approached by two women, one of whom was Vietnamese while the other was Indonesian,[7] and ambushed with VX nerve agent near an airport self check-in kiosk at level 3, departure hall in KLIA 2, the low-cost carrier terminal at Kuala Lumpur International Airport[8] while waiting for a 10:50 a.m. AirAsia flight to Macau.[9] VX is a chemical weapon banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993. North Korea, which has not ratified the convention, is suspected of holding a stockpile.[10][11][12][13]
Malaysian police said that Kim had alerted an airport receptionist, saying that "someone had grabbed him from behind and splashed a liquid on his face" and a woman "covered his face with a cloth laced with a liquid".[14][6]
A resuscitation device was strapped to Kim's face, and he was then transported by stretcher through the airport to reach an ambulance.[15] He was treated at the airport in the Menara Medical Clinic by nurse Rabiatul Adawiyah Mohd Sofi and Dr. Nik Mohd Adzrul Ariff Raja Azlan, who later testified that he was sweating, in pain and unresponsive.[14][16] At the clinic, Kim was given 1 mg of atropine, and also adrenaline.[17] He was given tracheal intubation. He died about 15 to 20 minutes after the attack while being transferred from the airport to the Putrajaya Hospital.[18][7][19][20]
As he was traveling under the pseudonym "Kim Chol", Malaysian officials did not immediately formally confirm that Kim Jong-nam was the man killed.[13][21] Kim's extensive Facebook use under this pseudonym since at least 2010, and use of commercial email services for communications, may have made it easier for North Korean agents to seek his whereabouts and track his movements.[22] At the time of his death, Kim's backpack contained approximately $100,000 in cash and he was carrying four North Korean passports, all bearing the name Kim Chol.[23][24]
On 15 February, Malaysian police arrested 28-year-old Vietnamese woman Đoàn Thị Hương at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in connection with the attack.[25][21] Hương was identified through CCTV footage.[26] On 16 February, a 25-year-old Indonesian woman named Siti Aisyah was arrested and identified as the second female suspect.[27] Aisyah's boyfriend, a 26-year-old Malaysian named Muhammad Farid bin Jalaluddin,[nb 1] was also arrested on 16 February to assist in the investigation.[23][28]
Hương told the police that she was instructed by four men who were traveling with them to spray Kim with an unidentified liquid while Aisyah held and covered his face with a handkerchief as part of a prank.[29] CCTV footage showed that Hương and Aisyah rushed to separate restrooms after carrying out the attack, and that they headed to the airport taxi stand after leaving the restrooms.[30] Hương was seen leaving the airport by taxi at around 9:30 a.m.[9] Hương claimed that after she returned to look for the others, they had disappeared and thus she decided to head back to the airport.[29]
On 17 February, police arrested a 46-year-old North Korean man named Ri Jong-chol.[31][32] He was described as an IT worker for Tombo Enterprise, living in Malaysia.[33]
International reactions[edit]
South Korea[edit]
Kim Myung-yeon, a spokesperson for South Korea's Liberty Korea Party, described the killing as a "naked example of Kim Jong-un's reign of terror."[34] The South Korean government drew a parallel with the execution of Kim Jong-un's own uncle and others.[35][36] The acting President of South Korea, Hwang Kyo-ahn, said that if the murder was confirmed to be masterminded by North Korea, that would clearly depict the brutality and inhumanity of the regime.[37]
United States[edit]
North Korea was relisted as a state sponsor of terrorism by the United States on 20 November 2017, with the assassination cited as one of the reasons.[38]
In March 2018, the United States Department of State imposed additional sanctions on North Korea, having asserted that North Korea used VX nerve agent to assassinate Kim Jong-nam.[39][40]
On 10 June 2019, after the trial, The Wall Street Journal reported that former US officials stated Kim had been a CIA source. A book by Anna Fifield, The Washington Post bureau chief in Beijing, had earlier reported this, stating he had been previously filmed abroad with a US intelligence agent, and had carried a backpack that contained $120,000 in cash.[41][42][43]
Apology from North Korean officials to Vietnam[edit]
On 12 December 2018, it was reported that North Korean officials had informally apologized to Vietnam for involving a Vietnamese woman in the assassination following Vietnam's demands for an official apology and threats to sever diplomatic ties.[44]
Other reactions[edit]
The Executive Council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) expressed "grave concern"
over the incident and called for those responsible for the use of chemical weapons to be held accountable.[45]
In response to the incident, a self-described hacktivist known as Cyber Anakin took advantage of a North Korean propaganda website, which erroneously linked to a non-existent Twitter account. He registered a spoof account under that empty username and posted numerous anti-regime propaganda messages.[46][47][48]
Further investigations[edit]
According to lead police investigator Wan Azirul Nizam Che Wan Aziz, Kim Jong-nam told a friend that he feared his life was in danger six months before the assassination.[87]
One of the suspects, Siti Aisyah, had been in Malaysia at least a day before the attack, reportedly to celebrate her birthday with her friends.[88] Aisyah was a divorced mother who worked as a spa masseuse in Kuala Lumpur. She regularly returned to Indonesia to meet her mother and son. She told her mother that she found a better job as an actor in prank video for the Chinese market.[89] After Hương and Aisyah were arrested, they claimed they thought they were participating in a prank.[90] According to both suspects, they were told to play harmless tricks on people in the vicinity for a prank TV show, one target being Kim Jong-nam.[91] They said they were promised US$100, but after losing contact with their handlers, they never received the money.[92]
According to their lawyers, Hương was recruited in December 2016 in Hanoi, Vietnam, while Aisyah was recruited in January 2017 by a Malaysian scout working for the North Koreans. The women were handled by separate teams of North Korean men, who posed as being from Japan and China, one of the recruiters being Ri Ji-u.[92] Since their recruitment, Aisyah had performed the prank on at least 10 occasions. She was flown to Phnom Penh to perform the prank three times with an offer of US$200, while Hương performed it four times in locations including the airport terminals and Mandarin Oriental hotel in Kuala Lumpur.[92] The prank involved approaching unsuspecting men and putting hands on their faces or kissing them on the cheek, then apologising before running away. Then Ri Ji-u said that a new actress and actor would join them for the airport prank. He described the actor as a fat and bald man with a "black bag and jacket", matching Kim's description on the day of his death.[93] The Malaysian police retrieved a photo of "James" from Siti Aisyah's phone. He was later identified as Ri Ji-u.[94] The police searched for him but he was already in the North Korean embassy.[89]
On 19 February, Malaysian police named four more North Korean suspects.[95] They were identified as Ri Ji-hyon (aged 33), Hong Song-hak (34), O Jong-gil (55) and Ri Jae-nam (57), all of whom left Malaysia after the attack, and the Malaysian police requested help from Interpol and other relevant authorities in tracking them.[96] According to an unnamed source, the four suspects flew to Jakarta, Dubai and Vladivostok before reaching Pyongyang.[97][98] Three other male North Korean suspects were still in Malaysia: Ri Ji-u, who had lived in Malaysia for three years; Kim Uk-il, an employee of Air Koryo; and Hyon Kwang-song, the second secretary at the North Korean embassy.[99][100] These suspects had taken refuge in the North Korean embassy.[101][102]
On 22 February, Malaysia Royal Police Chief Khalid Khalid Abu Bakar said that the killing was "a planned effort" and that the two women arrested had been trained to carry out the attack and had repeatedly rehearsed it together at Pavilion Kuala Lumpur and Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC).[100] Khalid also alleged that the women apparently knew they were handling poisonous substances.[100] That same day, an unnamed Malaysian man believed to be a chemist was picked up by police during a raid on a condominium where he then led police to another condominium where various chemicals were seized.[103]
On 28 February, both women were charged with murder, which carries a mandatory death sentence.[91][90] A lawyer for Hương requested a second autopsy as he doubted Malaysian expertise, calling for experts from Japan and Iraq as well pathologists from North Korea itself to be involved.[104] The Malaysian police responded by telling the lawyer to appeal to the high court.[105]
On 3 March, the only detained North Korean suspect, Ri Jong-chol, was released and deported due to lack of evidence.[106] While in transit through China, he told the media that the Malaysian police threatened to hurt his family if he did not confess his involvement in the murder and said his arrest was part of a "conspiracy".[107][108] Malaysian police strongly denied his allegation.[109][110]
On 16 March, Interpol issued a red notice for the four North Korean suspects who had fled to Pyongyang.[111] The three North Korean suspects, Ri Ji-u, Kim Uk-il and Hyon Kwang-song, who were holed up in the North Korean embassy in Malaysia, were released on 30 March and allowed to return home after investigators interviewed them and cleared them of any wrongdoing.[112]
On 22 March, Yonhap News Agency released information stating that Ri Ji-hyon, one of the four suspects who left Malaysia after the attack (the man with a cap on the photo from the airport CCTV), is the son of former North Korean ambassador to Vietnam Ri Hong. From November 2009, he worked as a trainee diplomat in Hanoi for more than a year before becoming an interpreter for another few years. With his ability to converse fluently in the Vietnamese language, he is suspected of having seduced and lured the Vietnamese national Hương into a fake TV prank, making her believe that he is a rich South Korean man.[113][114] On the request of the Judicial Authorities of Malaysia, Interpol had published a red notice for Ri Ji-hyon for his involvement in the murder plot.[115]
According to the forensics investigation, Kim had a Dell laptop which had accessed data stored on a USB pen drive while he was in Langkawi, though the pen drive was not in his possession when he died.[116]
