Why does everybody assume Kim Jong-un killed his brother?
It may be tempting to blame the North Korean dictator for the assassination of Kim Jong-nam in Kuala Lumpur – but in the strange world of Pyongyang, it’s not the only theory that demands attention
Since the assassination of Kim Jong-nam at Kuala Lumpur airport on Monday, the fingers of suspicion have almost universally pointed towards North Korea.
But, as is often the case with Pyongyang, questions have been coming in thick and fast, while answers have been few and far between.
That a famous philanderer should be killed apparently by two beautiful women, possibly while visiting one of his many girlfriends for Valentine’s Day, almost seems a considered outcome rather than a coincidence. But again, we do not know. What we do know (at least, according to reports) is that Kim Jong-un’s older half brother was poisoned by two women. As Malaysian police official Fadzil Ahmat told the local newspaper The Star: “Someone grabbed him from behind and splashed a liquid in his face.”
Kim Myung-yeon, a spokesperson for South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s Liberty Party Korea, called it a “naked example of Kim Jong-un’s reign of terror”, yet this remark itself is more a naked example of anti-communist sentiment than anything else because, again, we simply don’t know.
Murdered Kim Jong-nam ‘felt he was living on borrowed time’ in Macau
Or consider the front page story of The Korea Times on February 16, which ran the headline “Kim Jong-un shows ruthless brutality” along with the subhead “Murder of half-brother risks ties with China”. The body of the story offers qualifications, but readers are also treated to side-by-side images of the two brothers, a close-up of the North Korean ambassador to Malaysia’s Jaguar and, well, you get the idea.
