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Kim Jong-Un's Half-Brother Reportedly Killed in Malaysia

posted by charon on Wednesday February 15, @09:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the conspiracy! dept.
News

Kim Jong-un's Half-Brother Reportedly Killed in Malaysia

takyon writes:

Kim Jong-un's estranged half-brother has reportedly been killed:

The half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has been killed in Malaysia, South Korean and Malaysian sources say. Kim Jong-nam, 45, is said to have been targeted at the airport in Kuala Lumpur, the capital. A source close to the Malaysian PM's office told the BBC that Mr Kim was killed in the city, saying his body was now undergoing an autopsy.

Kim Jong-nam was the eldest son of former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

Also at Bloomberg, NYT, Reuters, and DW.

Eldest Son of Former North Korean Dictator Assassinated

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

In a story filed at 23:22 GMT 2017-02-14, China-based SINA reports

[...] South Korea's TV Chosun, a cable television network, said that Kim was poisoned at Kuala Lumpur airport by two women believed to be North Korean operatives, who were at large, citing multiple South Korean government sources.

However, Selangor Police chief Abdul Samah Mat was reported to have said that a woman had approached Kim Jong-nam at the airport departure lounge and covered the victim's head with a cloth which contained an unidentified liquid.

[...] In 2001, Kim Jong-nam was caught at an airport in Japan traveling on a fake passport, saying he had wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland.

He was known to travel to Hong Kong, Macao and the Chinese mainland. He said several times over the years that he had no interest in leading his country.

Numerous North Koreans of influence who were suspected of less than total loyalty to the regime have been killed, apparently at the order his brother, the dictator. It appears that this latest death was simply tying up a loose end.

Earlier reports of poisoned needles or sprayed poison appear to lack credibility.

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

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  • (Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15, @09:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15, @09:14PM (#467600)

    They forgot to put BREAKING in the title for this up to the minute news item!

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Wednesday February 15, @09:53PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday February 15, @09:53PM (#467612)

      It'd be true BREAKING NEWS if the publication delays meant he'd stopped being dead.

      Silly low-tech people. Poison is so 80's. These days you should go for Polonium, or maybe Reality TV overdose, depending on how much you need the victim to suffer.
      Free tickets to go visit Disneyland Fukushima Reactor 2 should soon be available.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 15, @10:40PM

      by takyon (881) <{takyon} {at} {soylentnews.org}> on Wednesday February 15, @10:40PM (#467635) Journal

      Wow, a whole day late and submitted yesterday.

      Fuck off.

      --
      [SIG] 04/14/2017: Soylent Upgrade v13 [soylentnews.org]

      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16, @12:17AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16, @12:17AM (#467667)

        Literally "yesterday's news." In other words, NOT NEWS ANYMORE.

        Hey takyon, maybe you could submit an article about the Super Bowl -- I bet people would love to know who won.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16, @05:05PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16, @05:05PM (#467872)

        How on earth does this mocking "Fuck off" post get modded +2 but the reply to it gets -1 Troll?
        Something is amiss.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16, @05:54PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16, @05:54PM (#467897)

          get modded +2

          Because you don't know what you're talking about.

  • (Score: 5, Funny) by ikanreed on Wednesday February 15, @09:31PM

    by ikanreed (3164) on Wednesday February 15, @09:31PM (#467602)

    Can you imagine the primitive governments and Byzantine politics that form when family connections to a country's leader are the most important reins of power to hold.

    I'm sure happy to live in a modern liberal democracy where no presidents are children or spouses of previous presidents and family businesses aren't directly and officially supported by the government.

    What a mess that would be.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15, @09:53PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15, @09:53PM (#467610)

      We lost! Get over it!

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday February 15, @10:30PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 15, @10:30PM (#467630) Journal

      It sounds like Merry Olde England to me. Or Scotland, with that whole Shakespeare thing. Or any other country with a feudal or authoritarian system.

      FWIW, the estranged brother of Kim Jong-un's looked pretty fat, which for a North Korean means he had it really good most of his life.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16, @10:59AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16, @10:59AM (#467753)

        FWIW, the estranged brother of Kim Jong-un's looked pretty fat, which for a North Korean means he had it really good most of his life.

        Or he ate a bit too much in Malaysia? Seriously, you don't need to spend most of your life to get that fat.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16, @06:27PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16, @06:27PM (#467906)

      Yeah that would be terrible, but I would still support Ivanka as the First Female (and Jewish) POTUS, if only to have the LEFT paint her as LITERATELY MYSAGONISTIST HITLER.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday February 15, @10:02PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 15, @10:02PM (#467616)

    covered the victim's head with a cloth which contained an unidentified liquid.

    Yeah so about that, wtf? Hmm something liquid or really high vapor pressure at room temp, that didn't kill the first responders, that presumably didn't kill the attacker (so skin proof but inhalation killer).

    I'm sitting here trying to think it over.

    Even very short persistence nerve agents would kill the passersby and probably the killer and maybe the first responders.

    Its a serious tech question, thinking back to my chemistry days, what in the quant lab or the ochem lab could have killed me by inhalation but not the folks around me, not unusually noteworthily stinky... this has got to be some hard core crazy nerve gas type stuff, like almost hollywood plot. Its not as simple as "well it was chloroform".

    Its strange, I mean why not just knife the guy? I suppose this shows off how capable they are to go a hit with chemicals this weird.

    You know this is gonna lead to new regs like "no liquids in carryons at all". Personally I'd fly on a completely nude aircraft IF it would allow skipping security completely (which seems safe enough?) I'd give 50:50 odds that nude flights will exist within two decades.

    I'd give them a pass if the target had a known severe allergy. If all they did was spray peanut oil at him and he was allergic to peanuts then its not quite so james bond movie plot.

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Wednesday February 15, @10:13PM

      by tangomargarine (667) on Wednesday February 15, @10:13PM (#467624)

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack#Attack [wikipedia.org]

      I mean, they dropped multiple bags of the stuff (almost a liter each, per 5 attackers) in the middle of rush hour in Tokyo and still only managed to kill 12 people. Sounds like a couple drops to the bag would plausibly be enough to kill the guy but not effect others nearby.

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"

      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 15, @10:29PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 15, @10:29PM (#467629)

        Yeah the Japanese attack fits in with the army training I had a quarter century ago, the problem with chemical attacks is dispersion, its like nukes, you vaporize the folks 10 feet away a billion times too much and a mile away at least some people survive unharmed.

        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 15, @10:30PM

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 15, @10:30PM (#467631)

          but obviously the point is one dead nerve gas victim implies there should be about 3 serious casualties (like 100% disabled and/or died very young) and maybe 50 partially disabled for life. Just in case anyone missed that.

        • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15, @11:46PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15, @11:46PM (#467657)

          you vaporize the folks 10 feet away a billion times too much

          Optimally, you want to vaporize folks just enough to get the job done, to save on resources. Wait, wasn't VLM the one advocating Concentration Camps for immigrants? Oh, dear, the whole discussion just took on a Nazi tinge.

          • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16, @03:17PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16, @03:17PM (#467816)

            Concentration Camps for immigrants

            Alternative freedom areas, you mean.

    • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Wednesday February 15, @10:41PM

      by zocalo (302) on Wednesday February 15, @10:41PM (#467636)
      The killer could have worn gloves, I suppose, but the claimed use of a "mask" (or more likely a cloth) over the face does imply inhalation or ingestion was required rather than contact, which is indeed a strange choice that would seem more likely to fail than, say, something where skin contact was enough. Then again, there are lots of sensitive membranes in the nose and throat, so maybe they were just tring to improve the odds of getting it into the blood stream or triggering anaphylactic shock through something like a severe peanut allergy while using a lower concentration of whatever it was?

      I guess we'll have a better idea when the results of the autopsy inevitably get made public, and I can't help but wonder how well alleged DPRK assassins do under interrogation when faced with a choice between a trail with a mandatory hanging if found guilty or some kind of "deal".
      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!

      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 15, @10:49PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 15, @10:49PM (#467639)

        autopsy

        Won't that be fun... I just realized if they find nothing, it could be some top secret military stuff or lets face it, fat old bastard you know you're a dead man walking for political reasons, two agents sneak up on you and slap a towel with some perfume from her purse on it and they literally scare you to death into a massive heart attack. A week later some poor Dr get stuck trying to find the "missing poison", which is missing because there isn't one.

        OMG I'm under attack oh no, is this what nerve gas smells like? panic panic panic panic fall over dead

        • (Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Wednesday February 15, @11:32PM

          by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday February 15, @11:32PM (#467649)

          Put cloth over face, he reaches up to remove, needle-stab him in the genetically-enhanced posterior.
          Enjoy as doctors and the CIA are puzzled not to find traces in the lungs.

        • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Wednesday February 15, @11:52PM

          by zocalo (302) on Wednesday February 15, @11:52PM (#467661)
          I'd have thought an autopsy would be more along the lines of "what can we definitively establish about how this person died?" rather than "this person may have been poisoned, so let's concentrate on the search for toxins". Obviously in this particular instance I dare say they'll be careful to be very thorough on the toxicology side of things (and will probably get some "specialist help"), but ultimately an autopsy is a process that is more or less the same regardless of the cause of death; you always check *everything*, then see what cause(s) of death correlate most closely with your findings. If it's something classified, then even if the toxicology report just comes back with something like "Chemical analysis matched a known toxin (details classified) in lethal quantities." with a referral to a classified report, that's still good enough for a cause of death.
          --
          UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!

        • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16, @07:59AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16, @07:59AM (#467741)

          Malaysia has decent political and economic ties with North Korea so don't be surprised if they find nothing:

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia%E2%80%93North_Korea_relations [wikipedia.org]

          A Malaysian "university" even gave Kim Jong Un an honorary doctorate:
          http://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2013/10/23/help-uni-kim-jong-un-phd/ [thestar.com.my]

          It's not like Malaysia has a good track record for such stuff: http://www.sarawakreport.org/2015/12/how-ags-office-connived-to-prevent-a-second-post-mortem-on-kevin-morias-exclusive-expose/ [sarawakreport.org]

    • (Score: 2) by inertnet on Wednesday February 15, @11:30PM

      by inertnet (4071) on Wednesday February 15, @11:30PM (#467647)

      Could it have been a biological attack? A bacteria containing cloth, handled by someone who was vaccinated against it? Or even a fungus? Something that you don't have to bring into a country, but that can be 'created' in a hotel room.

      • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday February 15, @11:34PM

        by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday February 15, @11:34PM (#467650)

        Name one which kills you in minutes, though...

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Hawkwind on Wednesday February 15, @11:59PM

      by Hawkwind (3531) on Wednesday February 15, @11:59PM (#467662)
      I wouldn't assume too much about how the attack was carried out. I came across different stories yesterday (my favorite was two women stabbing him with needles). Today The Guardian is limiting the cause of the attack to what the victim was believed to had said before dying

      The estranged older brother was once considered the heir apparent but lived a life in exile. He told medics at Kuala Lumpur airport on Monday that he was attacked “from behind” with a chemical spray while waiting to board a 10.50am flight to Macau, where he had lived.
       
      He died in an ambulance on the way to hospital. Malaysian government sources claim North Korean officials in Malaysia objected to an autopsy being conducted on the body.

      Looks like they've brought in one person: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/15/kim-jong-nam-malaysian-police-arrest-female-suspect-over-death [theguardian.com].

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16, @12:40AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16, @12:40AM (#467676)

      I believe you're over thinking the situation. The cloth most likely contained a nude picture of Kim Jong-Un spread eagle. The disgust and shock was enough the trigger a heart attack in the fatty half brother. Case closed.

    • (Score: 2) by Sulla on Thursday February 16, @05:48AM

      by Sulla (5173) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 16, @05:48AM (#467727)

      Maybe they thought they were getting away with something. A knife is an obvious thing. If this had been done successfully might have come off as a heart attack.

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday February 16, @12:54AM

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Thursday February 16, @12:54AM (#467679) Homepage Journal

    One of the assassins was wearing a sweater that said "LOL" on it.

    --
    we have a ... crazy person (MDC), that regularly posts more coherent and interesting things than do these racist trolls