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Reporters compete to take photos and videos of the Malaysian police station where a female suspect in the killing of Kim Jong-nam had been taken

While Feb. 17 marked the fifth day since the killing of Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the investigation into his death has stalled. While North Korea was initially identified as the likely culprit behind the crime, no evidence has emerged to support this.

NIS behind allegations against North Korea

To date, the most definitive claim that North Korea is responsible for the killing of Kim Jong-nam came from South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) Director Lee Byung-ho. Lee reported to the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee on Feb. 15 that “Kim Jong-nam was assassinated because of an order given after Kim Jong-un came to power that had to be carried out.”

“Rather than being based on the calculation that Kim Jong-nam posed a threat to his rule, this action reflects Kim Jong-un’s megalomaniacal personality,” Lee added. While Lee did not offer any specific evidence for this, the idea that North Korea was behind the crime quickly became the established theory.

As Malaysian investigators arrested the two female suspects who committed the crime on Feb. 15, it appeared that the case would be quickly solved. There was widespread speculation that the two women were members of a multinational ring of assassins hired by North Korea. Some newspapers, including the South China Morning Post, set the mood by reporting that North Korea had actively trained and used female agents to carry out assassinations.

But given the clumsiness of the women’s actions during the crime and around the time of their arrest, they hardly looked like professionals killers. Nor have they been linked to North Korea. The whereabouts of the four escaped men (who are presumed to have been behind the arrested women) remains a mystery. The New Straits Times newspaper quoted the testimony of the suspects in a report stating that one of the men who had fled was North Korean, but there is not yet any material evidence to back that up.

And yet the story about North Korea being behind the killing is not going away. Quoting a source in intelligence on Feb. 17, Malaysian daily The Star reported that Malaysia and Singapore were “the preferred choice” of North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB), which oversees the activities of North Korea’s foreign operatives. “The RGB had also used Malaysia in the early 2000s as one of its destinations to reroute prohibited chemicals, which can be used to make nerve gas,” the paper reported. The implication is that the RGB may have been involved in this crime.

Still too early to tell

The result of the Malaysian police’s postmortem is that there are no signs of external trauma on Kim Jong-nam’s body. Nor were there any signs of needle tracks or injuries from the application of toxic materials. The investigators have ordered a chemical analysis of a sample acquired during the postmortem. The big question is whether this analysis will be able to show a connection with North Korea.

On Feb. 17, the Star quoted a forensics expert as saying “it was not easy to pinpoint the cause of death of people who had been poisoned.” The expert said that “investigation of such cases would take time because the evidence was often not conclusive,” according to the Star.

If the four suspects who have fled are not apprehended within a short time, there are concerns that the investigation may drag on.

The Malaysian authorities remain circumspect. On Feb. 17, the state-run Bernama news agency quoted an official with the police as saying that it is still too soon to say that a foreign intelligence service orchestrated the killing of Kim Jong-nam. The previous day, Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said that the idea that North Korea had arranged the death of Kim Jong-nam is for now just a guess.

Under these circumstances, some even argue that the allegations against North Korea are a conspiracy theory. On Feb. 17, China’s state-run newspaper the Global Times argued that identifying Kim Jong-un as being behind the assassination of Kim Jong-nam was an attempt to demonize him and to overthrow the North Korean regime. The newspaper said there were obviously forces who were attempting to exploit the incident for political purposes.

By Jung In-hwan and Kim Jin-cheol, staff reporters

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]