Put aside for a moment the geopolitical implications. How did the assassins evidently sent by North Koreas Kim Jong Un to murder his half brother get the job done?
BANGKOKOne by one, on different flights at different times, four men from North Korea flew into Malaysia over the course of a fortnight in February, coming together finally in a condo apartment on Kuchai Lama Street in a bustling middle-class suburb on the edge of the countrys sprawling capital, Kuala Lumpur. According to multiple reports, after the murder and at the height of the scandal, they huddled frequently with Ri Jong Chol, a 47-year-old North Korean who holds a science degree and who moved to Malaysia in August 2016.
Ri worked for an outfit called Tombo Enterprises. According to its web site it makes anti-cancer supplements and emphasizes wholesome treatment built around herbal medicines. But Ri may have been more useful to the new arrivals for a particular set of skills: handling and combining the binary components of the deadly nerve agent VX, the weapon of mass destruction that would be used to kill Kim Jong Nam, estranged older half-brother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
VX, which is outlawed around the world by signatories of the Chemical Weapons Convention, is a slightly yellow liquid with no smell and no taste When its dispersed as an aerosol, victims do not know they have been affected until they begin to die, quickly and horribly, more or less like flies zapped with bug spray, choking, twisting and kicking as their nervous system shuts down. In one infamous incident at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah in 1968 more than 4,000 sheep were killed by accident some 30 miles from the test site.
But how do you handle such dangerous stuff, using it to kill one man instead of a whole crowd, especially if your best shot at that man is likely to be in a public place?
That would require two hands at a minimum, or better yet, two people. Then the question would be, who could approach the pudgy playboy Kim Jong Nam while raising the least suspicion?
Its not clear how the four men on Kuchai Lama street hooked up with two young women called Siti Aisyah and Doan Thi Huong, both of whom have been arrested, both of whom have said they are innocent, and both of whom face the death penalty if convicted.
Siti, an Indonesian in her twenties, had been working as a masseuse and nightclub hostess, and reportedly was out partying with friends the night before the slaying. Doan, 28, is a Vietnamese who flew into Kuala Lumpur from Hanoi on February 4. She also had been working as a hostess. On her Facebook page she posted under the name Ruby Ruby.
But the more details are revealed about their backgrounds, the murkier those become.
Citing travel documents she was carrying when arrested, Malaysian police identified the Indonesian as Siti Aisyah, of Serang, the capital of Indonesias Banten province. But Indonesian-language web sites suggest she is from the village of Angke, near Jakarta, and that there are two listings for her there: one indeed identifies her as entrepreneur Siti Aisyah, 25; the other says she is housewife Siti Aisah and that she is 27.
Indonesians do not typically have two ID documents.
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One site says Siti is divorced from an Indonesian man and has a 7-year-old son she rarely sees. She was married when she moved to Malaysia in 2013, one site said, but subsequently split from her husband.
She reportedly met the man, or men, who hired her for the Kim Jong Nam hit at a nightclub where she works in Kuala Lumpur. Local reports say she told police the men she met looked Korean or Japanese.
Broadcast reports say Doan Thi Huong is an aspiring singer who competed onVietnam Idol, her countrys version of the global Idol franchise. A video of the program shows a woman apparently auditioning who looks remarkably like Doan. She sings for just a few seconds before one of the three judges interrupts her and says, OK,a dismissal. She also says OK, and bows demurely. But the contestants name thats flashed on the screen is Dinh Thi Khuyen, not Doan Thi Huong.
A Facebook page attributed to Doan, which includes a couple of dozen Korean-sounding names among her friends, shows several photos of a woman with dyed reddish hair dressed provocatively. In one she wears a very fitted cheongsam, the classic one-piece Chinese dress, and in another shes sporting a red one-piece swimsuit. She is also pictured wearing a white, long-sleeved t-shirt emblazoned with the letters LOL.
Malaysian authorities say that prior to the incident at the airport, Siti and Doan staged a couple of practice runs, moving in on hapless victims at shopping malls with what presumably were benign chemicals or none at all.
On the morning of February 13, police say, Siti and Doan entered Kuala Lumpur International Airport Terminal 2, known as KLIA2. Its the home base of Air Asia, one of the worlds most successful low-cost carriers, and at any given time its likely to be full of holidaymakers and business people on a budget. It would have been teeming with backpackers, tour groups and adventure seekers, the departure area full of people waiting to board flights.
What grainy CCTV video shows from February 13 is a portly man subsequently identified as Kim Jong Nam wearing a light blue suit and carrying a medium-sized bag on one shoulder. Suddenly, a woman rushes up behind him and forcefully throws both arms around his neck as if to restrain him. Then a second woman comes up to him from the front and puts somethingperhaps a rag or tissue paperin his face. It all happens very quickly, and there appears to be little commotion around the heavy-set tourist and the women, who briskly walk away after attacking him.
One of the women, apparently the one who approached from behind, was wearing a white long-sleeved t-shirt. Another surveillance camera caught a clearer picture of her. The letters LOL were emblazoned across the front of the shirt.
The 45-year-old Kim Jong Nam has known for years that his 33-year-old half-brother, Kim Jong Un, the worlds most dangerous nuclear-armed dictator, wanted him dead. Jong Nam had questioned the right of his family to heredity rule, and there was a reported attempt on is life in 2011. But for years Jong Nam has lived in Macau under the protection of the Chinese, who may have deemed it wise to hold him in reserve as an alternative or at least an implied threat to their impetuous young client in Pyongyang.
Jong Nam has always been restless. He once famously got caught trying to visit Disneyland Japan using fake papers. In Kuala Lumpur, he was traveling on a passport under the name Kim Chol and posing as a businessman. He apparently believed that by traveling incognito on a low-cost carrier he could dispense with a phalanx of bodyguards.
Almost immediately after the LOL woman and her accomplice carried out their attack, police said, Jong Nam rushed toward employees at a nearby help desk, gesturing at his face, telling them he could not breathe well. First-aid workers soon placed him on a stretcher, police said, and as Jong Nam began to choke, the emergency crew left with the stricken victim, heading toward a nearby hospital. But he died in agony on the way, less than 20 minutes after he first ingested the poison.
At a news conference, Malaysian Health Minister Subramaniam Sathasivam said, VX only requires 10 milligrams to be absorbed into the system to be lethal, so I presume that the amount of dose that went in is more than that. If he inhaled the substance, or it went in through his tear ducts, a smaller quantity might have sufficed. But in any case, The doses were so high and it did it so fast and all over the body, said the minister. So it would have affected his heart, it would have affected his lungs, it would have affected everything.
Malaysia promptly launched an investigation, ordering an autopsy of Jong Namover the objections of North Korea, which demanded the bodys immediate release, and accused the police of desecrating the remains of a citizen of the so-called Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.
Kang Chol, the countrys ambassador to Malaysia, declared that the North had nothing to do with the death of that citizento whom he doggedly referred as Kim Chol.
South Korean Acting President Hwang Kyo-Ahn decried the killing as an intolerable crime against humanity and terrorist act. In Seoul, government elements told reporters they believed the plot was hatched and carried out by North Koreas foreign and security ministries.
Malaysia accused the plotters of endangering the lives of thousands of passengers by exposing them to a weapon of mass destruction. Luckily, a hazmat sweep found no evidence of VX contamination at the airport, which quickly went back into service.
On the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, the hit squad abandoned the safe house on February13. At least three of the men fled to neighboring Indonesia: Hong Song-Hac, Ri-Ji-Hyon and Ri Jae-Nam boarded Emirates Flight EK0359 at 10:20 p.m. local time bound for Dubai. No one knows how the fourth, O Jong-Gil, got out of Malaysia, but it appears he is gone, too. All are said to have returned to Pyongyang on February 17, presumably to the huzzahs of the increasingly paranoid, erratic, and murderous Kim Jong-Un, who recently ordered the executionby anti-aircraft gunsof five senior officials who made supposedly false reports that enraged the young tyrant.
Not all members of the black op got away in the initial police roundup. In addition to the women, police held Ri Jong-Chol, the medicine-manufacturer employee, but subsequently released him. He gave a press statement in front of the North Korean embassy in China protesting his innocence.
Malaysian authorities believe at least seven North Koreans were involved in the attack. One person they want to question is North Korean embassy Second Secretary Hyon Kwang-Song, who some believe ran the operation from his office. Because of diplomatic immunity, Hyon would have to consent to an interrogationwhich isnt going to happen.
Police also would like to interview Kim Uk-Il, an employee of the Norths flag carrier Air Koryo, who apparently was at the airport when Jong Nam was killedand also is believed to be hiding out in the embassy.
One of the women, Siti, has told authorities her recruiters told her she would be playing a practical joke on a businessman for a TV show, claiming she was paid $90 for tossing some baby oil on the mans face. But National Police Chief Khalid Abu Bakar has said the woman seen on video daubing VX on Jong Nams face clearly knew she was carrying out an attack, not some reality TV stunt. And the womens claims dont explain why they rushed to wash their hands after the incident. Nor why theyre still alive.
Siti vomited after she was nabbed by police, but both women should have been severely injuredif not killedthrough close contact with the VX. That they were not has led police to question whether their handlers gave them atropine, an antidote for the WMD.
Did the four men smuggle VX or its components into Malaysia? Did their local contact help mix it right there in Kuala Lumpur, or show the women how to combine the elements on Jong Nams face? Was it brought in through North Korean official channels, perhaps in diplomatic mail that is not subject to normal customs procedures? And was the whole affair coordinated by North Koreas shadowy spy agency the RGB (Reconnaissance General Bureau)?
It is very likely that the VX was smuggled into Malaysia either in person or as cargo, says Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore. There is also a possibility that the North Korean embassy smuggled it in by diplomatic pouch.
A few days after the murder, Pyongyang sent a high-level delegation to Malaysia for talks aimed at claiming the body of Kim Jong-Nam/Kim Chol, and springing Ri Jong-Chol. Group spokesman Ri Tong-Il told reporters the envoys also wanted to further develop friendly relations between the two governments. The two countries had enjoyed reciprocal visa-free travel, although mutual trade amounts to less than $10 million. Pyongyang had seen Malaysia mostly as an entry point into Southeast Asiaa region the North wants to be friends with as a means of countering Seoul.
But improved relations now seem unlikely, even impossible. Both countries have been lobbing angry accusations at each other, including a blast from Pyongyang that KLs investigation has been awash in weak points and contradictions. The Malaysians recalled their ambassador from Pyongyang, and are said to be even more suspicious since someone apparently tried to break into the morgue where Jong Nams body was eld.
Pyongyang was not getting any love from China either. China is unlikely to abandon its protg any time soon, but theres no question Beijings patience is wearing thin as his behavior gets weirder.
A video surfaced earlier this week in which a young man who says he is Kim Jong Nams son tells the camera he is with his mother and sister and concludes, We hope this gets better soon.
Siti and Doan will next appear on April 13, when prosecutors will ask that they be tried jointly in a higher court. At the request of defense lawyers, the judge slapped a gag order on the case, the better to protect the womens rights and their prospects for a fair trial. Expect frequent leakage.
Christopher Dickey also contributed reporting to this story.
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Anatomy of a North Korean Assassination - Daily Beast