WHAT’S THE STORY?
MALAYSIAN police say they have arrested a woman in connection with the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s half-brother, Kim Jong Nam.
The statement said that the woman was arrested at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
She is understood to have been carrying Vietnamese travel documents. Kim Jong Un’s half-brother died on Monday after suddenly falling ill at the airport.
According to a Malaysian government official, Kim told medical workers before he died that he had been attacked with a chemical spray. Malaysian officials have provided few other details and 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 several high-level government officials in what the South Korean government has described as a “reign of terror”. South Korea’s spy service said that North Korea had been trying for five years to kill Kim.
But 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 politicians who briefed reporters about the closed door meeting with the spy officials.
WHO EXACTLY WAS KIM JONG NAM?
The man assassinated in an airport in Malaysia was previously involved in a failed attempt to sneak into Japan to visit Disneyland in 2001. This appeared to thwart his leadership ambitions and ensured that power in North Korean was handed to Kim Jong Un after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il.
Banished from his dictator father’s favour, the exiled Kim Jong Nam frequented casinos and five-star hotels, and travelled around Asia with little say in North Korean affairs.
That ended on Monday when he was killed in Kuala Lumpur.
Despite multiple reported assassination attempts over the years, Kim Jong Nam was still a member of the most important family in North Korea, a direct blood descendent of the state’s founder Kim Il Sung.
Estranged for years from his relatives, the 45-year-old gambler and playboy played a key, if complicated role in the dynasty that has ruled for three generations since North Korea’s foundation in 1948.
WHO WERE HIS PARENTS?
KIM Jong Nam is the eldest son of Kim Jong Il, the second member of the Kim family to rule in North Korea. Kim Jong Il had three known sons with two women. Kim Jong Nam was born from his father’s unofficial relationship with the North Korean actress Sung Hae Rim.
Kim Jong Il forced Sung to divorce her first husband and live with him, but Kim Il Sung – the first leader of North Korea and Kim Jong Il’s father – refused to accept Sung as his daughter-in-law.
Kim Jong Il reportedly kept Kim Jong Nam’s 1971 birth a secret from his father for several years.
Sung was reportedly forced to leave North Korea as a consequence of her relationship with Kim Jong Il and died in Moscow in 2002.
Despite his mother’s exile from the country, some foreign experts were convinced that Kim Jong Nam would end up inheriting power from his father as a result of a traditional Korean value system which favours the eldest son as heir.
Unlike his mother, Kim Jong Nam eventually won the affection of his grandfather, who died in 1994, according to South Korean media reports.
DID HE HAVE ANY OTHER BROTHERS OR SISTERS?
KIM Jong Nam’s two younger brothers share a mother, Kim Jong Il’s Japan-born mistress, the dancer Ko Yong Hui.
Ko’s links to Japan, which colonised the Korean peninsula in the early part of the 20th century, led some to believe that Kim Jong Nam would outpace his siblings in the succession race. Ko moved to North Korea in the 1960s from Japan, where she had lived among the ethnic Korean minority. She died in Paris in 2004.
Kim Jong Un eventually won the succession race and became the North’s supreme leader in late 2011 upon the death of his father. Believed to be in his early 30s, he has carried out a series of high-profile executions and purges, and outside experts say few can now challenge his rule.
Kim Jong Nam’s other half-brother, Kim Jong Chol, was once viewed by some outsiders as a candidate for leader, but a former sushi chef of Kim Jong Il said the late leader derided the middle son – a huge fan of rock guitarist Eric Clapton – as “girlish”.
The brothers also have at least two known sisters. One is Kim Yo Jong, who shares a mother with Kim Jong Un and who works as a senior propaganda official. The other, Kim Sol Song, was born from Kim Jong Il’s relationship with another woman, Kim Yong Sok, and there are unconfirmed reports she is being detained.
WHAT ABOUT OTHER RELATIVES?
KIM Jong Nam’s aunt, Kim Kyong Hui, Kim Jong Il’s younger sister, was reportedly behind the expulsion of Kim Jong Nam’s mother to the Soviet Union. Kim Kyong Hui and her husband Jang Song Thaek then acted as Kim Jong Nam’s caretaker.
Kim Kyong Hui and Jang were believed to have played a major role in grooming Kim Jong Un as leader.
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