South Korean spy chief Lee Byong-ho claimed on Wednesday North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had his exiled half-brother murdered in Malaysia this week because of a \u201cdelusional disorder”.<\/p>\n
Widespread reports a day earlier claimed 45-year-old Kim Jong-nam was poisoned by a pair of unidentified female assassins while preparing to fly from Malaysia to Macao on Monday.<\/p>\n
National Intelligence Service (NIS) Director Lee said there was no suggestion the deceased had been viewed as a threat to Pyongyang’s authoritarian regime, according to local news agency Yonhap.<\/p>\n
While addressing a parliamentary intelligence committee on Wednesday, he added it was too soon to verify whether the killing had been carried out using poisoned needles or a chemical spray, as the Malaysian authorities have yet to reveal the outcome of an ongoing investigation and autopsy.<\/p>\n
But Lee also pointed out that Kim had been targeted by Pyongyang for years.<\/p>\n
-Purge<\/p>\n
The eldest son of late former leader Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-nam fell out of favor and was estranged after attempting to visit Japan in 2001 on a fake passport.<\/p>\n
While he later criticized North Korea’s dynastic succession, he is said to have written to Kim Jong-un in 2012 asking to be spared along with his family.<\/p>\n
Despite being concerned for his life, Kim Jong-nam apparently made no attempt to seek asylum in South Korea but rather benefited from Chinese protection.<\/p>\n
The NIS believes more than 100 North Korean officials have been purged under the current leader’s reign of terror since late 2011.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, South Korean police have reportedly beefed up security around high-profile North Korean defectors to avoid a repeat of what happened in Malaysia.<\/p>\n
A government spokesperson told reporters that Seoul is also \u201cclosely cooperating” with Malaysian counterparts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Korean spy chief Lee Byong-ho claimed on Wednesday North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had his exiled half-brother…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[56126,56127,171,10056,34,33],"class_list":["post-109131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-korea","tag-assassinated","tag-kim-jong-nam","tag-korean","tag-malaysia","tag-north-korea","tag-south-korea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}