The estranged half-brother of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, has died in Malaysia, according to reports.
Reuters quoted a Malaysia official as saying that an unidentified North Korean man – believed to be Kim Jong-nam – had died while being rushed to hospital from the airport on Monday.
Abdul Aziz Ali, police chief for the Sepang district, said the man’s identity had not been verified. An employee in the emergency ward of Putrajaya hospital confirmed it had received a deceased Korean who was born in 1970 with the surname Kim.
South Korean media reports claimed Kim was poisoned by two female North Korean operatives in at Kuala Lumpur international airport on Monday. The South Korean cable broadcaster TV Chosun said the elder Kim, who has reportedly never met North Korea’s current leader, was attacked by the two unidentified women with “poisoned needles”. The Guardian has not been able to verify the reports.
Kim Jong-nam, the eldest son of the late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, does not hold an official title and has played no part in running North Korea, but just weeks into his younger half-brother’s rule, he described the regime as “a joke to the outside world” and said that he opposed the hereditary transfer of power in the country.
Those comments appeared in a book by Yoji Gomi, a journalist with the Japanese newspaper the Tokyo Shimbun, who said he had exchanged emails with Kim Jong-nam over seven years.
The suspects reportedly fled the scene in a taxi, but Malaysian law enforcement officials believe that North Korea was behind the attack, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency added.
South Korea’s foreign ministry said it could not confirm the reports, and the country’s intelligence agency could not immediately be reached for comment.
If confirmed that North Korean operatives were responsible, Kim’s death would be the highest-profile killing connected with the Pyongyang regime since Kim Jong-un ordered the arrest and execution of his uncle and close adviser, Jang Song-thaek, in December 2013.
Kim Jong-nam’s mother is Sung Hae-rim, a South Korean-born actress who died in 2002, possibly in Moscow. She was never married to Kim Jong-il.
Kim Jong-nam, who is believed to have spent the past 15 years living in China and Macau, was once tipped to succeed Kim Jong-il as the third member of the Kim dynasty to rule the authoritarian state.
But he reportedly fell out of favour after embarrassing the North Korean government when caught trying to enter Japan on a fake passport, saying he wanted to visit Tokyo’s Disneyland, in 2001.
He said several times over the years that he had no interest in leading his country.
“Personally I am against third-generation succession,” he told Japan’s Asahi TV in 2010, before his younger had succeeded their father.
“I hope my younger brother will do his best for the sake of North Koreans’ prosperous lives.”
