Kim Jong Un stood to gain so little from
assassinating his own half-brother that such a killing would be little more
than a senseless murder by an increasingly paranoid regime, according to
experts and officials. Intelligence
agencies in South Korea believe the dictator's half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, was
killed by two women at an airport in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
The reports out of Malaysia read like the
pages of a spy thriller, alleging the women approached Kim in broad daylight
while he was waiting for a flight, and used needles, spray or a chemical-soaked
cloth to poison him, before fleeing in a taxi.These details have been
unconfirmed by NBC News, but on Wednesday local police said that security
footage led them to arrest one woman carrying a Vietnamese passport.
If this was indeed an assassination, it was
almost certainly North Korean in origin, according to Professor Hazel Smith,
director of the International Institute of Korean Studies at Britain's University
of Central Lancashire. "If confirmed, this looks like pure vindictiveness
by the leadership ... this is an irrational act," she said. "Kim Jong
Nam was not a political figure and not associated with any fugitives outside of
the country [so killing him] is not strategic or protective, and not
retaliatory."
While they have different mothers, Kim Jong
Nam and Kim Jong Un are both sons of former North Korean dictator Kim Jong. Kim
Jong Nam, who is believed to be in his mid-40s, was once considered a successor
to the leadership. But he fell out of favor when he was caught trying to enter
Japan on a fake passport in 2001. He said he wanted to visit Disneyland Tokyo a
symbol of the Westernization demonized by North Korea.
Since then he has been critical of the regime
but experts never considered him a direct threat to his half-brother's rule. "Most
North Koreans do not know of his existence and he ruled himself out as a
political player long ago," according to James Edward Hoare, an associate
fellow and North Korea expert at Chatham House, a London-based think tank.
In this sense, it appeared his death would
have no immediate benefits for the regime."It is not just the manner of
it, which is brutal, but it's the fact that there's no pay-off," said
Smith at the University of Central Lancashire. It wouldn't be the first time Kim Jong Un, a
youthful dictator still in his 30s, had meted out pitiless punishment.
Since he came to power in 2011, he has
executed several high-profile members of his government as well as his uncle
and aunt. In May 2015, South Korean intelligence officials said he ordered his
defense minister to be blasted to pieces with an anti-aircraft gun as
punishment for falling asleep at a meeting.
His own half-brother wasn't safe from this
petulant wrath, and Kim Jong Nam had a "kill order" put on his head
as well as several attempts on his life, according to Kim Byung Kee, a lawmaker
in South Korea's opposition Minjoo Party. This manhunt saw him pen a letter to
his half-brother in April 2013 begging for a pardon, according to the lawmaker,
who is also assistant administrator of the country's Intelligence Committee.
"Please cancel the punishment order made
against I and my family. We have nowhere to go and nowhere to hide," the
letter said, according to Kim Byung Kee. He was citing information from the
country's National Intelligence Service
known as the NIS South Korea's version of the CIA.
These threats led Kim Jong Nam to seek refuge
in Macau, an autonomous region of China known for its gambling industry, said
Lee Cheol Woo, lawmaker with South Korea's ruling Liberal Party. He and his
family lived there with the protection of the Chinese government, according to
Lee, who is chair of the Intelligence Committee. NBC News was unable to
immediately confirm that detail with officials in China.
If he was under Beijing's protection, that
could explain the timing of his killing, with North Korean agents sensing an
opportunity while he was overseas."China probably offered physical
protection within Chinese land," according to Koh Yu-whan, a professor of
North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul.
There are many questions swirling around Kim
Jong Nam's death.
For example, even if North Korea was behind
his killing, it may not have been directed by Kim Jong Un himself. It's
plausible he was killed by agents acting without official orders who were
trying to show loyalty to the regime, according to Smith, the professor at the
University of Lancashire.
But if the killers were acting on official
orders, why assassinate a man who was by all accounts a powerless force in
exile? Several South Korean lawmakers said it was nothing more than a display
of paranoia from an increasingly isolated pariah. Smith said it could be
evidence of a more worrying collapse within North Korea's leadership.
The country has a long history of human
rights abuses and crimes against humanity, which the United Nations said are
"strikingly similar" to the horrors of Nazi Germany. These include
sending hundreds of thousands of people to labor camps for offenses as
arbitrary as "gossiping" about the government.
However, although many Westerners assume that
the government has always been chaotic and irrational, the regime had until
recently been a functioning political entity. "Even during the famine
years [from 1994-8], North Korea collapsed economically but not
politically," Smith said.
Furthermore, while Kim Jong Un's father and
grandfather were both brutal dictators, they both incorporated a certain amount
pragmatism into their rule, understanding the occasional compromise needed to
maintain autocratic control over their country.
That all changed under Kim Jong Un."Kim
Jong Un has no experience in managing the country apart from resorting to pure
brutality," Smith said. If Kim Jong Un assassinated his own brother an
assassination that provided no discernible benefits to the dictator "it
tells us that it's a very very unstable political system in North Korea." This
could be evidence of "the unravelling of the political class in North
Korea," she said.
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