Mick Hartley

The Untold Story of Kim Jong-nam’s Assassination, by Doug Bock Clark, is a well-researched look at the whole remarkable story of how Pyongyang engineered the killing of Kim Jong-un's half brother in the highly public space of a Malaysian airport. It's a lengthy piece, written in that particular style of American journalism that suggests, to me at least, that the writer has got a Pulitzer Prize somewhere at the back of their minds. Still – why not. It is an incredible tale, and he tells it well.

There are no great surprises, though he does some interesting background research on one of the women responsible, the Indonesian sex worker Siti Aisyah.

Basically, yes, it does seem that, as they claim, the two women had no idea what they were involved in, and certainly hadn't a clue that they'd be killing someone, let alone setting off an international storm. They thought it was all some game show-type deal – and it transpires that the King Jong-nam incident wasn't the first time they'd been persuaded by their North Korean handlers to take part in this supposed prank of wiping stuff on the faces of unsuspecting victims. They were naive village girls, hooked on the idea that this might be some sort of escape route from the dreary business of selling sex to overweight Chinese or American tourists.

One interesting possibility new to me is that the nerve agent used may not have been true VX, but VX2, made by splitting VX into two non-reactive compounds which are only lethal when combined. Hence two women, and hence neither on their own would have been affected.

The fate of the wretched women doesn't look good. Malaysia will have been embarrassed by the whole incident, and will be keen to punish someone, in the absence of any North Koreans. 

In the end, though, the big question: were the North Koreans lucky, or was the whole thing a brilliantly executed piece of political theatre, designed to show their ruthlessness and their international reach?

Looking at the fallout of the assassination, it's easy to buy into the caricature that it was the botched work of an incompetent dictatorship. Throughout the mission, the North Korean agents did not bother to hide their faces from the CCTV cameras, which can be interpreted as a rookie error.

But there is another possibility.

As the Korea University professor Nam [Sung-wook] told me, “Pyongyang wanted to send a worldwide message by murdering Kim Jong-nam in this gruesome, public way.”

It has long been speculated that Jong-nam had been sheltered by China, viewed as a potential figurehead replacement should his half brother be deposed, as he was known to be favorable to Chinese interests.

Nam explained, “Pyongyang wanted to horrify the rest of the world by releasing a chemical weapon at an airport.” By unleashing such weaponry in a place symbolically shared by the global community—an international airport—North Korea was warning everyone not to cross it. As Nam concluded, “Jong-un wants to reign a long time and negotiate as a superpower. The only way to do that is to keep the world in fear of his weapons. He has a grand design, and this is part of it.”

In the end, Pyongyang suffered no significant consequences from the assassination. The people on death row for the murder are two Southeast Asian women, whom Nam believes are not guilty.