South Korean Intelligence concludes North Korean government killed Kim Jong Nam

South Korean intelligence officials announced that officials from North Korea’s secret police and Foreign Ministry were involved in the killing of the estranged half brother of the country’s leader.

Speaking in a closed-door parliamentary hearing, Lee Byung-ho, the director of the National Intelligence Service, said that four of the eight North Koreans identified as suspects by the Malaysian authorities were agents from North Korea’s Ministry of State Security, the country’s secret police.

Mr. Lee said that two other suspects worked for the North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and another was affiliated with Air Koryo, the North’s state-run airline company.

Mr. Lee, the South Korean intelligence chief, was quoted by the lawmakers as saying that the eight North Koreans, working as two four-member teams, converged in Kuala Lumpur to carry out the Feb. 13 assassination. Malaysian authorities have said that the North Koreans had hired and trained two women, one from Indonesia, the other from Vietnam, to attack Kim Jong Nam at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

Hyon Kwang-song, a senior diplomat at the North Korean Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, and three other North Koreans worked as a support team, Mr. Lee told the lawmakers. Mr. Hyon and the Air Koryo employee, Kim Uk-il, remain at the embassy in Malaysia.

[New York Times]

This entry was posted in DPRK Government, Jang Song Thaek purge, Kim Jong Un by Grant Montgomery.