North Korea calls Kim Jong-nam’s killing a “conspiracy orchestrated by South Korea”

Posted on : 2017-02-24 14:35 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
In first official response, Pyongyang refers only to “a citizen of the Republic dying of shock”
Kim Jong-nam (left) and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (right)
Kim Jong-nam (left) and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (right)

After a long silence, the North Korean government in Pyongyang issued their first official response on Feb. 23 to the killing of leader Kim Jong-un’s half-brother Jong-nam.

The response, which comes ten days after Kim’s death, is seen as signaling Pyongyang’s intent to embark on a mud-slinging campaign amid the investigation into the facts of the killing.

The strong allegations of North Korean involvement were consistently denied by Pyongyang, which accused the Malaysian government of complicity in a “conspiracy orchestrated by South Korea.” The response also claimed issues with the Malaysian government’s investigation process in international law terms and included numerous attacks on its credibility.

North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency printed the “statement by a North Korean Jurists’ Committee spokesperson” on Feb. 23, along with a number of articles interpreting its content. The text appeared to be an encapsulation of claims made in two press conferences by North Korean ambassador to Malaysia Kang Chol on Feb. 17 and 20 and a press release from him on Feb. 22. Founded in Oct. 2002 as an ad hoc organization with the North Korea Supreme People’s Assembly Presidium, the North Korean Jurists’ Committee has previously provided legal arguments to bolster claims by authorities in Pyongyang.

In the statement, the committee’s spokesperson offered North Korea’s version of the events of Kim’s death.

“In Malaysia on Feb. 13, a citizen of our Republic with a diplomatic passport was waiting to board an aircraft when he suddenly went into shock and subsequently died while being transported to the hospital,” the statement said, calling Kim’s death an “unexpected tragedy.” While ignoring the fact that the victim was Kim Jong-nam or that poisoning has been alleged, the statement merely referred to the incident as “a citizen of the Republic dying of shock.”

“As our embassy has concluded the death to have been the result of cardiogenic shock, there is no need for a postmortem, and we have made it clear that an postmortem cannot be performed because the deceased was a holder of a diplomatic passport and subject to extraterritoriality,” it continued. The Malaysian government’s decision to conduct an postmortem was denounced as a “gross violation of sovereignty and a violent infringement of human rights.”

But the Malaysian postmortem has repeatedly maintained that because the case involves a foreign national dying on their soil under suspicious circumstances, they have a responsibility to establish the cause of death. In announcing the findings from the postmortem, they stressed that Kim had not died of natural causes or suffered a heart attack.

In terms of Pyongyang’s claims, the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations states that the foreign ministry of the country of sojourn is to be notified in cases of officials with special privileges and immunity. This means that because Kim Jong-nam was not registered with the Malaysian government as a diplomat, he is not subject to extraterritoriality.

Pyongyang denounced the Malaysian government for conducting an autopsy without discussing it or having a North Korean representative in attendance. But a South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs source familiar with related affairs said the postmortem “falls in the purview of the investigation, which is a sovereign right of the government in the country of sojourn.”

“[Pyongyang] can request that the country of sojourn allow it to be a part of the investigation, but the decision lies with that government,” the source said.

North Korea also claimed that the Malaysian secret police “became involved and raised the matter of an postmortem after conservative media in South Korea began making claims of ‘poisoning.’”

“This shows that South Korean authorities had predicted this kind of incident in advance and crafted a script for it,” the statement alleged.

Malaysian police have announced that the highly toxic VX nerve agent was used as a lethal chemical weapon in Kim’s killing. The claims suggest that as the local police investigation turns up more and more evidence of North Korean involvement, Pyongyang is responding with accusations of involvement by Seoul - without offering any definite proof to back them up.

The North Korean Jurists’ Committee spokesperson went on to cite a number of “holes and contradictions in the legal position.” In particular, it cited the change in cause of death from cardiogenic shock to poisoning, the fact that the culprits appeared unhurt despite the victim having been poisoned, and the identification of a North Korean who left the county after being present at the scene of the attack as a suspect despite a lack of clear evidence. While the points are issues that the investigation will have to clear up, their inclusion in the statement appeared to be an attempt to question the objectivity and fairness of local police investigation from the outset by pointing out “contradictions.”

The claims also appear connected to Pyongyang’s repeated arguments on the need for a joint investigation, which the Malaysian government has already rejected. Indeed, the statement proposed conducting a “fair, united investigation by having a team of legal representatives sent to [Malaysia] to meet with the suspects, hear their statements, confirm whose orders they received, meet with [North Korean] citizens who have been arrested, and investigate the scene of the incident and video footage in detail.”

A South Korean government official said there was “some possibility the North could attempt to have its ‘team of legal representatives’ try to enter Malaysia in order to fan the international controversy.”

By Jung In-hwan and Kim Ji-eun, staff reporters

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

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