Latest / Big Brother: North Korea’s Forgotten Prince / The Most Dangerous Game

Transcript

The Most Dangerous Game · Big Brother: North Korea’s Forgotten Prince

0:08
Speaker 1: It's February two thousand seventeen, the day before Valentine's Day.
0:14
Speaker 1: Kim Tal is standing inside Kuala Lympur International Airport, staring
0:20
Speaker 1: up at the departures board. It's busy. Throngs of passengers
0:26
Speaker 1: glide through the airport's spacious hall, making their way from
0:30
Speaker 1: check in to security. This is Malaysia's biggest and busiest
0:35
Speaker 1: international airport. On a usual day, nearly a hundred and
0:39
Speaker 1: sixty thousand passengers travel through here. At nine in the morning,
0:45
Speaker 1: Kim blends into the crowd. He's bald and pudgy, wearing
0:49
Speaker 1: light blue jeans and a gray blazer, a black backpack
0:53
Speaker 1: slung casually around his right shoulder. Kim gazes up at
0:57
Speaker 1: the list of departures and sees that his flight to Macau,
1:01
Speaker 1: his home in the south of China, is on schedule.
1:04
Speaker 1: He begins walking toward the ticketing area. Little does he know,
1:10
Speaker 1: but he is being watched. Kim approaches an air Asia kiosk.
1:19
Speaker 1: As he enters his flight information, he doesn't notice two
1:23
Speaker 1: young women, both thin with dark hair, slowly creeping up
1:28
Speaker 1: behind him. Suddenly, a pair of hands clasp around Kim's
1:33
Speaker 1: face from behind. Is as if someone is trying to
1:36
Speaker 1: surprise him, like a game of Guess who, But instead
1:41
Speaker 1: the woman wipes her hands across his cheeks, pressing her
1:45
Speaker 1: palms firmly against his eyes, his nose, his mouth. Kim
1:50
Speaker 1: jerks his head away just as the first woman releases
1:54
Speaker 1: her grip. The second woman, wearing a T shirt that
1:57
Speaker 1: says L O L, does the same. She smears her
2:01
Speaker 1: hands all over his face. Kim thrashes his head to
2:06
Speaker 1: break free. The woman yells sorry and scurries away, and
2:11
Speaker 1: then as quickly as they appeared, they're gone. The women
2:17
Speaker 1: vanish into the crowd. Kim chal takes a deep breath
2:23
Speaker 1: and tries to collect himself. He checks his belongings. The
2:27
Speaker 1: woman didn't take his bag or I D or not
2:30
Speaker 1: anything from his pockets. All they did was smear a
2:34
Speaker 1: greasy substance over his eyes and nose. It feels like
2:39
Speaker 1: motor oil, and then it starts to burn. Kim staggers
2:46
Speaker 1: the closest information desk, his nose starts to run. The
2:50
Speaker 1: pain on his skin intensifies. He explains to an employe
2:55
Speaker 1: that he's been assaulted, that two strangers came up behind
2:59
Speaker 1: him and rubbed oil or grease or something all over
3:05
Speaker 1: his face. He tries to wipe the grease off, but
3:09
Speaker 1: the steam is so intense he can hardly keep his
3:13
Speaker 1: eyes open. Very painful, he explains, taking deeper and deeper breaths,
3:20
Speaker 1: Very painful. The attendant walks Kim to three officials through
3:27
Speaker 1: labored breaths. He explains the story again, be attacked, the grease,
3:32
Speaker 1: the pain. The officials nod and lead him down a
3:36
Speaker 1: long hallway to the airport clinic. Kim begins to limp,
3:40
Speaker 1: and his vision blurs. He groans in pain as his chest,
3:45
Speaker 1: his lungs, his heart tightened like a clamp. Inside the clinic,
3:51
Speaker 1: doctors measure his vitals. The burning becomes relentless. His breathing
3:58
Speaker 1: is wapid and shallow. Somebody snaps a picture of Kim
4:02
Speaker 1: chal He slumped in a chair, his jacket cast off,
4:07
Speaker 1: his pot belly peeking out of his royal blue tshirt.
4:11
Speaker 1: His eyes are half open, but he's unconscious. At this point,
4:15
Speaker 1: he's barely breathing. Seconds later, medics laid him flat on
4:20
Speaker 1: an orange stretcher and strap an oxygen mask over his
4:24
Speaker 1: nose and mouth, squeezing it again and again, trying to
4:28
Speaker 1: force air into his lungs. Soon he's ferried out to
4:32
Speaker 1: the wine of an ambulance tron. It's the last thing
4:41
Speaker 1: Kim Chall will ever here. Within fifteen minutes, he is
4:47
Speaker 1: dead and nobody knows why. Hours later, as police review
4:53
Speaker 1: Kim Chall's strange and sudden death, they're left with the
4:57
Speaker 1: most basic and bizarre question, how did Kim die? Who
5:03
Speaker 1: were these women, what did they smear onto his face?
5:07
Speaker 1: And why of all people did they attack him? But
5:12
Speaker 1: it soon became clear that Kim Chal It was not
5:15
Speaker 1: your average visitor to Kuala Lympur International Airport. Discovered inside
5:21
Speaker 1: his backpack is approximately one hundred and twenty thousand American
5:27
Speaker 1: dollars in cash, as well as twelve vials of atropine,
5:32
Speaker 1: a rare antidote that's used to treat deadly chemical attacks.
5:37
Speaker 1: Analysis from a lab also reveals that the substance smeared
5:41
Speaker 1: onto his face was VX nerve agent, one of the
5:46
Speaker 1: deadliest chemical weapons on the planet. Within twenty four hours,
5:51
Speaker 1: they learned that Kim Chal was not the man he
5:55
Speaker 1: claimed to be. The name on his passport was just
5:59
Speaker 1: an alias, a cover. The dead man's real name was
6:05
Speaker 1: Kim Jong Nam, and while most people had never heard
6:09
Speaker 1: of him, International experts knew him well. He was North Korean,
6:15
Speaker 1: the firstborn son of the former Supreme Leader Kim jong il.
6:20
Speaker 1: Years ago, many had considered Kim jong Nam the front
6:24
Speaker 1: runner to the Hermit Kingdom's throne. And his death it
6:29
Speaker 1: became clear that this was more than a strange random accident.
6:35
Speaker 1: It was an assassination and early Valentine's Day present from
6:39
Speaker 1: the North Korean regime. The question is why Hi? My
6:58
Speaker 1: name is Eden Late and on this podcast we dive
7:02
Speaker 1: into the sad life and strange death of the man
7:05
Speaker 1: who should have inherited North Korea's throne, Kim Jong Nam.
7:11
Speaker 1: Join me as we explore the one time airs rise
7:14
Speaker 1: and fall from Chong Nam's early promise he should have
7:18
Speaker 1: been the successor to the palace. Intrigued, there's a lot
7:22
Speaker 1: of cloak and dagger, you know, James Bond stuff around
7:26
Speaker 1: Kim John Nam to the power struggles that spelled his doom.
7:31
Speaker 1: Anybody who thinks differently is a threat and needs to
7:35
Speaker 1: be eliminated. This is Big Brother, the rise and fall
7:41
Speaker 1: of North Korea's forgotten prince. Here's the thing you need
7:54
Speaker 1: to know about the brothers Kim to the late nineties
7:58
Speaker 1: to the early two thousand's North Korea watchers never considered
8:02
Speaker 1: Kim Jongan, the current leader, to be much of a
8:06
Speaker 1: threat or even a contender for the throne at all.
8:10
Speaker 1: He was Chong Il's third son, he was unknown throughout
8:14
Speaker 1: his own country. When it came to his father's hereditary title,
8:19
Speaker 1: he stood in the back of the line. At the
8:23
Speaker 1: front Chongan's big brother, Kim jong Nam. Many assumed that
8:29
Speaker 1: the family patriarch, Kim jong Il, was grooming chong Nam
8:33
Speaker 1: to rule the country to make him the quote great successor.
8:38
Speaker 1: After cheng Nam graduated high school, he had become something
8:42
Speaker 1: of a computer whiz and was awarded a post leading
8:46
Speaker 1: the regime's Ministry of People's Security. The job put tong
8:50
Speaker 1: Nam in charge of the country's police, prisons, and interment camps.
8:56
Speaker 1: It also made him responsible for gathering intel from North
8:58
Speaker 1: Korea's vast net work of informants who surveilled the country's
9:02
Speaker 1: the centers. In other words, Kim jong Nam spent his
9:07
Speaker 1: early twenties serving as North Korea's top cop. Kim John
9:13
Speaker 1: was part of a cohort of Core Leadership. That's Michael Madden,
9:17
Speaker 1: the founder and director of real leadership. Watch and as
9:22
Speaker 1: you can tell, his audio is distorted, and that's because
9:27
Speaker 1: he was using a burner phone user phone, so I
9:31
Speaker 1: don't know what what you knows on my phone these days.
9:34
Speaker 1: In fact, his call quality can be so distorted that
9:37
Speaker 1: we've asked a voice actor to read his answers. Kim
9:42
Speaker 1: Jong Nam was part of a cohort core leadership that
9:45
Speaker 1: would go with people from the State Security Department, Secret police.
9:49
Speaker 1: Madden remembers Kim Jong Nam's early days working for the regime.
9:53
Speaker 1: What they would do is they would do inspections of
9:57
Speaker 1: these economics sites, whether they were farms, industrial factories. They
10:01
Speaker 1: would do these audits and they would find people who
10:04
Speaker 1: they thought had been deceptive in their reports, and then
10:08
Speaker 1: these people would be publicly executed and their families sent
10:11
Speaker 1: to labor in central political detention facilities. Essentially, it was
10:16
Speaker 1: Kim Jong Nam's job to make sure people weren't defrauding
10:19
Speaker 1: the regime and, by extension, stealing money from his father.
10:25
Speaker 1: It was an important job and a signal to many
10:28
Speaker 1: that someday Cheng Nam would be the one to push
10:31
Speaker 1: the big red button. He'd be the guy high stepping
10:35
Speaker 1: soldiers would salute as they marched through kyong Yang. The palaces,
10:40
Speaker 1: the power, the attention, all destined to be his, and
10:45
Speaker 1: then it fell apart. By the time Kim Jong ill
10:51
Speaker 1: died in two thousand and eleven, Kim Jong Nam was
10:54
Speaker 1: a pariah, an outcast. He hadn't lived in North Korea
10:58
Speaker 1: for more than a decade, aid he'd been exiled to
11:02
Speaker 1: the glittering lights of Macau, which is probably the last
11:06
Speaker 1: place anyone would expect to find a royal member of
11:08
Speaker 1: the Kim dynasty. Macau was and is China's capitalist wonderland,
11:16
Speaker 1: the Monte Carlo of the East. It's a modern island oasis,
11:20
Speaker 1: filled with flashy skyscrapers and neon lights. It's also the
11:24
Speaker 1: gambling capital of the world, a place crawling with so
11:28
Speaker 1: many high rollers it hauls in three times as much
11:31
Speaker 1: revenue as Las Vegas. Anna Fifield, a journalist and author
11:36
Speaker 1: of the book The Great Successor, explains why such a
11:41
Speaker 1: city would appeal to the exiled prince. I think Macau
11:45
Speaker 1: was really the perfect place for Kim Jong Nam to
11:48
Speaker 1: be that the gambling Mica of Asia. Kim Jong Nam
11:54
Speaker 1: had a reputation of being a playboy, being a bon
11:57
Speaker 1: vivon loving, you know, going around the place living the
12:00
Speaker 1: good life. He had one family and children in Beijing,
12:04
Speaker 1: another family in Macau. He apparently had girlfriends all around
12:10
Speaker 1: the place. He knew his wine, He enjoyed, you know,
12:14
Speaker 1: being a rich princeling living the jet set life, much
12:20
Speaker 1: like a Russian oligarch kid, or you know, maybe much
12:24
Speaker 1: like a Hilton or a Kadeshian or something. According to locals,
12:29
Speaker 1: Kim jong Nam was often seen hitting the slot machines
12:32
Speaker 1: and betting big on bakara, dining at the city's restaurants,
12:36
Speaker 1: and boozing it up in high end whiskey bars. He
12:39
Speaker 1: had a reputation as a heavy spender who was familiar
12:42
Speaker 1: with the back alleys of the world's red light districts
12:45
Speaker 1: and the prostitutes who worked them. It seemed that he
12:49
Speaker 1: loved living the high life, hopping from country to country
12:54
Speaker 1: with a fake Portuguese passport. By the looks of it,
12:58
Speaker 1: Kim jong Nam was no longer line to the North
13:00
Speaker 1: Korean throne. He wore jeans and T shirts and even
13:05
Speaker 1: sported facial hair, fashion choices that would be impossible in
13:09
Speaker 1: his own country, and worse, he used social media. He
13:14
Speaker 1: was posting pictures on his Facebook page standing standing outside
13:18
Speaker 1: um various American armed casino chains. There. Online, he kept
13:25
Speaker 1: in touch with classmates from his high school and even
13:28
Speaker 1: like the page of a comedian who spoofed his younger
13:31
Speaker 1: brother under the stage name Kim Jong Um with an M.
13:37
Speaker 1: Kim Jong Nam would even exchange emails with journalists and
13:41
Speaker 1: was consistent with his messages. He had no political ambitions
13:46
Speaker 1: and no desire to lead North Korea. He wished his
13:49
Speaker 1: baby half brother the best, and lastly, he just wanted
13:54
Speaker 1: to live his life with his family and be left alone.
13:59
Speaker 1: Here's the ill Kim Jong Nam in his own words,
14:03
Speaker 1: the appointment of a successor is totally my father's decision.
14:07
Speaker 1: So he makes his decisions or he doesn't need to
14:10
Speaker 1: talk to me or talk to another person. I think
14:14
Speaker 1: this kind of question you have to ask my father
14:16
Speaker 1: to my brother now, not to me. I can't, but
14:20
Speaker 1: I'm sorry you cannot. So I cannot answer this question
14:24
Speaker 1: because I'm not involved in political any affair in Astoria,
14:30
Speaker 1: and that's how it was supposed to be. Just months
14:34
Speaker 1: before Kim Jong Ill died, he prepared his will and testament.
14:38
Speaker 1: In it, he gave the future successor Kim jong un
14:41
Speaker 1: advice on policy and leadership. He also made it clear
14:46
Speaker 1: that the new leader should leave his big brother alone,
14:49
Speaker 1: stating that Kim jong Nam was not to be quote
14:53
Speaker 1: targeted or harassed. But on February two thousand seventeen, as
15:00
Speaker 1: Kim jong Nam stared up at the fluorescent lights of
15:03
Speaker 1: an airport hospital clinic, dipping in and out of consciousness
15:07
Speaker 1: for the last time, it became evident that somebody had
15:11
Speaker 1: not honored his father's dying wish. Was Kim jong Un
15:15
Speaker 1: hunting his brother? If he already had the power, the throne,
15:21
Speaker 1: the honor of being named supreme leader, why chase Kim
15:26
Speaker 1: jong Nam down to an airport in Malaysia, and why
15:29
Speaker 1: go through such elaborate means to end his life? North
15:49
Speaker 1: Korean leaders have brother dies in Kuala Lumpur. My name
15:57
Speaker 1: CCTV footage services showing attack Kim jong Ki. Kim jong
16:10
Speaker 1: Nam's death was never supposed to be primetime news. About
16:14
Speaker 1: four hours after the so called Kim chall died, police
16:19
Speaker 1: reviewed his documents and started making calls. His passport listed
16:23
Speaker 1: his home country as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea
16:27
Speaker 1: or DPRK, the official name for North Korea, but detectives
16:32
Speaker 1: made a mistake. Instead of notifying the communist regime of
16:36
Speaker 1: the death, they accidentally contacted the embassy for South Korea.
16:43
Speaker 1: It wasn't long before the National Intelligence Service, kind of
16:46
Speaker 1: like South Korea's CIA, caught on, realizing that the man
16:50
Speaker 1: called Kim Chall was in fact the estranged brother of
16:54
Speaker 1: North Korea's ruler. It became clear that the man's death
16:57
Speaker 1: was likely an assassinate sian that one mistake would change
17:03
Speaker 1: the dynamic of the entire investigation. Shortly after, the South
17:08
Speaker 1: Korean Intelligence Agency would leak the news to the press,
17:12
Speaker 1: and within twenty four hours, Kim's death was making international headlines.
17:17
Speaker 1: Journalists like Anna Fifield, who was then reporting for The
17:20
Speaker 1: Washington Post, rushed to Kuala Lumpur. As soon as I
17:24
Speaker 1: heard that Kim Jong Nam had died in Malaysia. I
17:27
Speaker 1: got on the next plane to Kuala Lumpa and immediately
17:31
Speaker 1: went to terminal, to the Air Asia Budget terminal, which
17:35
Speaker 1: is where it happened. It all looked very normal at
17:39
Speaker 1: that stage, and I walked around the kiosk where he
17:42
Speaker 1: was trying to check into his flight. You know, it
17:45
Speaker 1: took a long time, several days for the Malaysians to
17:49
Speaker 1: realize that this was a highly toxic chemical agent and
17:53
Speaker 1: actually caught an off this airport and do a thorough
17:57
Speaker 1: deep clean. So it was a kind of surreal situation Asian. Wait,
18:00
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have known anything had happened. In the hours
18:04
Speaker 1: following Kim Jong Nam's death, detectives began pouring over airports
18:09
Speaker 1: CCTV camera footage. They closely watched the movements of the
18:13
Speaker 1: two mysterious women who had smeared VX nerve agent across
18:17
Speaker 1: his face. They quickly noticed that these two women were
18:21
Speaker 1: not acting alone. Investigators noticed a Korean man plugging a
18:27
Speaker 1: black suitcase, shadowing tong Nam everywhere he went, from the
18:32
Speaker 1: information desk after the assault, to the police, and then
18:36
Speaker 1: trailing him to the clinic. Even as chong Nam was dying,
18:41
Speaker 1: the man lurked nearby, only leaving once the prince was
18:46
Speaker 1: lifeless on a stretcher. Immediately after, the man ducked into
18:52
Speaker 1: a bathroom and re emerged in a fresh change of clothes.
18:57
Speaker 1: That wasn't the only suspicious character investing gators found. There
19:01
Speaker 1: was also a pair of Korean men, both in baseball caps,
19:06
Speaker 1: carrying backpacks. Footage shows them standing next to the two
19:10
Speaker 1: women minutes before the attack, applying a substance to their hands. Afterwards,
19:17
Speaker 1: both men slip into a bathroom, ditched their backpacks, and
19:20
Speaker 1: change their clothes. One even shaves his goatee. And there's
19:26
Speaker 1: a fourth man. Earlier footage shows him sitting in a
19:31
Speaker 1: coffee shop with one of the female assailants, apparently debriefing her.
19:37
Speaker 1: In the main terminal, all four men check in for
19:41
Speaker 1: a flight. A North Korean airline attendant plus a diplomat
19:45
Speaker 1: from the North Korean embassy whisked them through security. Footage
19:51
Speaker 1: shows the men smiling and laughing as they wait in line.
19:55
Speaker 1: Days later, investigators would find their flight itinerary. The four
20:01
Speaker 1: North Koreans who lived Kuala Lumpa in a real hurry
20:05
Speaker 1: after that attack on Kim jong Nam, they went to
20:08
Speaker 1: a Jakata Dubai Vladivostock pyeong Yang. They kong Yang, the
20:15
Speaker 1: capital of North Korea. By the time the four nameless
20:23
Speaker 1: North Koreans boarded their flight, Kim jong Nam's body was
20:27
Speaker 1: still warm, and by the time investigators realized what exactly
20:32
Speaker 1: had happened, the men were already back in the DPRK
20:37
Speaker 1: Suddenly the death of Kim Jong nam was an international crime,
20:43
Speaker 1: and as investigators tried to pinpoint the men's identities and
20:47
Speaker 1: what role they might have played in the assassination, they
20:51
Speaker 1: looked to question anybody who might have come in contact
20:54
Speaker 1: with them, and that's when the investigations started to get
20:59
Speaker 1: well messy. Here's the thing you need to know about Malaysia.
21:06
Speaker 1: Until very recently, it maintained close ties with North Korea.
21:11
Speaker 1: The DPRK imported oil and rubber, and even noodles from Malaysia,
21:16
Speaker 1: while the islands received steel and iron in return. North
21:20
Speaker 1: Korea's airline air Kodio, regularly flew in and out of
21:25
Speaker 1: the country. In fact, high level North Korean citizens could
21:29
Speaker 1: travel to Malaysia without a visa, and Malaysians could make
21:32
Speaker 1: similar visa free trips to Pyongyang. Approximately one thousand North
21:38
Speaker 1: Koreans lived and worked in Malaysia. The country shared such
21:43
Speaker 1: close ties that in two thousand and thirteen, Kim Jongan
21:46
Speaker 1: received an honorary doctorate from a Malaysian university. This often
21:52
Speaker 1: surprises people. You've probably heard pundits called North Korea a
21:57
Speaker 1: hermit kingdom, the terms images of an isolated society in
22:02
Speaker 1: perpetual lockdown, cut off from the rest of the world,
22:07
Speaker 1: and there's some truth to that. For most citizens in
22:10
Speaker 1: North Korea, there is no Internet access, information is tightly controlled,
22:17
Speaker 1: and most North Koreans can't travel freely around their own country,
22:22
Speaker 1: let alone abroad. But a hermit kingdom, they are not
22:27
Speaker 1: a hermit kingdom. That's Jenny town, a senior fellow at
22:31
Speaker 1: the Simpson Center in Washington, d C. North Korea really
22:34
Speaker 1: has diplomatic relations with about forty four countries, I believe,
22:38
Speaker 1: and they have embassies in several countries as well. I
22:44
Speaker 1: think there is a sense that we're more cut off
22:47
Speaker 1: from them than they are from the world. Indeed, North
22:51
Speaker 1: Korea maintains diplomatic relations with most countries. It has embassies
22:56
Speaker 1: all over the globe, including in liberal democracy such as Spain, Italy, Sweden, Mexico,
23:03
Speaker 1: South Africa, and others. It receives billions of dollars worth
23:08
Speaker 1: of imports from China, millions from Russia, Brazil and India too.
23:14
Speaker 1: There's a lot of business interests. A lot of it
23:17
Speaker 1: comes from Southeast Asia, some from India, especially in terms
23:22
Speaker 1: of the mining sectors. There was at one time a
23:25
Speaker 1: big push in europe Um looking at North Korea as
23:31
Speaker 1: an outsourcing for it. There's longstanding history between North Korea
23:37
Speaker 1: and countries, for instance, in Africa, in South America, and
23:42
Speaker 1: especially with countries that have either been dictatorships or a
23:46
Speaker 1: part of the communist block, and North Korea returns the favor.
23:52
Speaker 1: Each year it illegally exports millions of dollars of coal.
23:56
Speaker 1: It's spent decades exporting missiles and heavy arms to Ron.
24:00
Speaker 1: It even deployed troops to Syria to fortify the regime
24:04
Speaker 1: during its civil war. Countries that are willing to ignore sanctions,
24:10
Speaker 1: these are all wide open um for the North Koreans,
24:15
Speaker 1: and the North Koreans are very good at identifying and
24:18
Speaker 1: cultivating relationships and and finding people to work with them
24:23
Speaker 1: as well. And North Korea's net is wide. They've built
24:29
Speaker 1: libraries and Mauritius sewers in Rwanda, a machete factory in Burundi,
24:35
Speaker 1: and a concrete factory in Somalia. Some sources indicate that
24:39
Speaker 1: they've even exported guns to places like Sweden. If that
24:43
Speaker 1: surprises you, you're not alone. The image of North Korea
24:48
Speaker 1: as a reclusive, closed off loaner of a nation is
24:51
Speaker 1: a caricature, one that leads us to mock, infantilized and
24:55
Speaker 1: underestimate them as a country. But it's not a that accurate.
25:01
Speaker 1: North Korea has not always been a hermit kingdom, but
25:04
Speaker 1: has actually been an active player on the international stage.
25:08
Speaker 1: That's Dr Benjamin Young. I'm an assistant professor and Homeland
25:13
Speaker 1: Security and Emergency Preparedness at Virginia Commonwealth University, and as
25:17
Speaker 1: he explains, North Korea has been meddling with international affairs
25:22
Speaker 1: for a long time. They achieved this by sending their
25:28
Speaker 1: people and ideas abroad, from building statues and palaces in
25:32
Speaker 1: Africa and Southeast Asia to sending military trainers too as
25:39
Speaker 1: far flung as Grenada. In the nineteen eighties, North Korean
25:43
Speaker 1: trainers were sent to Zimbabwe to help Robert Mugabe cracked
25:49
Speaker 1: down on descent and this was what North Korea was
25:53
Speaker 1: able to do. It had its niches around the world,
25:55
Speaker 1: and one of the niches was brutality. Nor Korea has
26:00
Speaker 1: hosted foreign soldiers on its own soil, putting Irish revolutionaries
26:05
Speaker 1: through boot camp and teaching Mexican insurgents the art of tekwondo.
26:11
Speaker 1: The United States maintains that its stores have always been
26:15
Speaker 1: closed to the DPRK, but that's not entirely true. So
26:20
Speaker 1: North Korea actually took out full page ads in the
26:23
Speaker 1: New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe. North
26:28
Speaker 1: Koreans have paid for these ads, and so they were
26:31
Speaker 1: essentially free to put up whatever they want. Ads aren't
26:35
Speaker 1: the only things to have fallen through the cracks. The
26:38
Speaker 1: water surrounding North Korea are famous for their seafood, and
26:42
Speaker 1: the country salmon halls have worked their way into the
26:44
Speaker 1: frozen food aisles of big box stores. There's even evidence
26:48
Speaker 1: that the animation of some major motion pictures have been
26:51
Speaker 1: accidentally outsourced to animators in North Korea. All of this
26:57
Speaker 1: is to say that North Korea isn't a pariah state
27:01
Speaker 1: you might think, and that was especially true in a
27:04
Speaker 1: place like Malaysia. When Kim Jong Nam was killed, movement
27:10
Speaker 1: between the two countries was relatively fluid. This made Malaysia
27:15
Speaker 1: a perfect hub for illicit activities, from illegal arm sales
27:19
Speaker 1: to espionage to money laundering, and it also made Malaysia
27:25
Speaker 1: one of the best places for North Korea's assassins to hide.
27:55
Speaker 1: The scene outside the North Korean embassy in Kuala lumpur Is.
27:59
Speaker 1: You usually serene the two story building in the city's
28:03
Speaker 1: western suburbs as a hulking for quiet compound, a seaside
28:08
Speaker 1: McMansion surrounded by a thick concrete fence and swaying palm trees.
28:14
Speaker 1: On February, the scene outside the embassy was much different.
28:20
Speaker 1: Dozens of journalists crowded the front gate, microphones outstretched as
28:25
Speaker 1: news outlets from across the globe jockey for a scoop.
28:30
Speaker 1: That day, North Korea's ambassador to Malaysia held a news
28:33
Speaker 1: conference and launched a string of denials. He denied that
28:37
Speaker 1: Kim Jong Nam had died of a VX attack. He
28:40
Speaker 1: painted from the heart attic at the airport it was
28:45
Speaker 1: a natural dist He denied that North Korea was remotely involved.
28:51
Speaker 1: Now there are so many rumors spread to the public
28:54
Speaker 1: to defame the image of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea,
28:58
Speaker 1: the Malaysian police should bear the full responsibility for them.
29:04
Speaker 1: He even denied that the body belonged to Kim Jong Nam.
29:08
Speaker 1: The embassy has already identified his identity, named Kim Tull.
29:14
Speaker 1: The request for the DNA simple is postus One. North
29:22
Speaker 1: Korean diplomats argued that a formal autopsy or any formal
29:26
Speaker 1: identification like a DNA test was excessive. They claimed that
29:31
Speaker 1: Malaysian authorities were colluding with South Korean spies, trying to
29:35
Speaker 1: quote besmirched the image of our republic at the time,
29:40
Speaker 1: and A Fifield was on the scene reporting the story.
29:44
Speaker 1: We had the North Korean diplomats um clearly, I think,
29:50
Speaker 1: unsure of what to do. The ambassador was outside the
29:55
Speaker 1: the embassy gates briefing the media flatly denied eyeing everything
30:01
Speaker 1: that had happened. The North Koreans were quite frankly getting
30:05
Speaker 1: sick of the attention. When I went to the North
30:08
Speaker 1: Korean embassy in Kuala Lympa and went up to the
30:11
Speaker 1: gates there, the North Koreans had removed the button from
30:15
Speaker 1: the buzzer on the door so that nobody could ring
30:18
Speaker 1: the doorbell anymore, because they were obviously so fed up
30:21
Speaker 1: with pisky journalists coming to ask questions. What the embassy
30:25
Speaker 1: officials failed to mention was that two North Koreans, a
30:29
Speaker 1: diplomat and an airline employee, who had helped the four
30:33
Speaker 1: mysterious assassins get their flights home, were camped inside the
30:37
Speaker 1: embassy and they refused to leave. The Malaysian police were
30:44
Speaker 1: desperate to interview the two men. Here's Khaled Abu Bakar,
30:49
Speaker 1: the Inspector General of the Royal Malaysian Police Force, questioned
30:54
Speaker 1: the embassy. North Korean embassy, who uh allow us to
31:01
Speaker 1: interview both of them? Uh we hope that the for
31:08
Speaker 1: your embassy were all previous. Allow us to improve them,
31:14
Speaker 1: interview them quickly. If not, we will compare them to conpoys.
31:20
Speaker 1: But North Korea held its ground. The men refused to
31:24
Speaker 1: leave the embassy. In response, Malaysia refused to give up
31:30
Speaker 1: the body, making the morgue the latest battleground. Journalists outside
31:36
Speaker 1: the hospital morgue waiting to see who would come to
31:40
Speaker 1: identify the body. You know, The North Koreans were insisting
31:45
Speaker 1: that this you know, North Korean official called Kim Charles,
31:48
Speaker 1: as far as they were saying, be returned to them.
31:52
Speaker 1: And then suddenly this happened. One night after refusing to
31:56
Speaker 1: give up Him Jong Nam's body, an attempted break in
31:59
Speaker 1: at the Quala lymp morgue, tensions flared. Within hours, an
32:05
Speaker 1: armed Special Operations police unit was stationed outside the mortuary.
32:10
Speaker 1: More media swirld so there was a lot of talk
32:14
Speaker 1: that his son would come to come to Kuala Lumper
32:20
Speaker 1: to identify the body, potentially give a DNA match. This
32:24
Speaker 1: was big news. Kim Jong Nam's firstborn son, Kim Hans Hall,
32:30
Speaker 1: lived in Macau but was relatively unknown and rarely made
32:34
Speaker 1: public appearances. Now the question was would he really show
32:39
Speaker 1: up in Malaysia an a young Asian guy with geek
32:42
Speaker 1: sheet glasses and you know, spiky cool hair at Kuala
32:46
Speaker 1: Lympa that over those few days you know, suddenly had
32:49
Speaker 1: the international media hounding him. A few days later, it
32:53
Speaker 1: was rumored he came to identify the body, arriving disguise
32:57
Speaker 1: as a special police officer for his safety. But nobody
33:01
Speaker 1: knows if Kim Hansho did come. Regardless, police were able
33:06
Speaker 1: to confirm that the dead man truly was Kim Jong Nam.
33:10
Speaker 1: We have now established that kind is Kinjo Nah. We
33:18
Speaker 1: have fulfield laws on his identification. A few days later,
33:29
Speaker 1: the North Korean ambassador reappeared to the press and called
33:32
Speaker 1: the identification a sham. The standoff between the North Korean
33:37
Speaker 1: holdouts and the Malaysian police continued because one of the
33:41
Speaker 1: suspects was North Korea's second secretary, a diplomatic post he
33:45
Speaker 1: had diplomatic community and the airline employee remains safe as
33:49
Speaker 1: long as he didn't leave the embassy grounds. In an interview,
33:54
Speaker 1: investigator called Abu Bakhar seemed to admit as much, you
34:00
Speaker 1: don't have to be afraid. You should, you should, you
34:03
Speaker 1: should corporate no arras on will be applied. But as
34:09
Speaker 1: guards and journalists surrounded the embassy waiting for the persons
34:13
Speaker 1: of interest to make a move, it became increasingly clear
34:17
Speaker 1: that North Korea was not going to flinch. Even Buckhart
34:21
Speaker 1: started to sound increasingly desperate. I'm saying the game that
34:25
Speaker 1: the Korea not corporate thing with this indecent investigation. If
34:29
Speaker 1: he thinks five, yes, we will win. Outside, definitely somebody
34:33
Speaker 1: will come out, he said. But they didn't, and as
34:38
Speaker 1: the stalemate stretched into weeks, the DPRK made a decision.
34:43
Speaker 1: If the North Koreans hold up in the embassy weren't
34:46
Speaker 1: allowed to freely leave, then all Malaysians in North Korea
34:49
Speaker 1: would be trapped. Two The North Koreans took all of
34:54
Speaker 1: the Malaysians in Pyongyang and the Malaysian diplomats and their
34:59
Speaker 1: families essentially put them onto embassy erased and wouldn't allow
35:03
Speaker 1: them to leave North Korea until the North Korean nationals
35:08
Speaker 1: in Malaysia had been allowed to leave. Hostage diplomacy one
35:12
Speaker 1: of North Korea's great tricks. Suddenly it became clear that
35:16
Speaker 1: North Korea and Malaysia weren't just fighting over a dead body.
35:20
Speaker 1: They were sprinting headfirst into diplomatic crisis of international proportions,
35:25
Speaker 1: one that would entangle six foreign countries and three nuclear powers,
35:30
Speaker 1: the United States included. Meanwhile, remember those women who smeared
35:36
Speaker 1: Kim Jong Nam's face with VX nerve agent. As all
35:40
Speaker 1: of this drama was unfolding, they were both sitting in
35:43
Speaker 1: a Malaysian prison cell. Unlike everybody else involved, they weren't spies,
35:49
Speaker 1: they weren't diplomats, they weren't even North Korean. They were
35:54
Speaker 1: sex workers, and they had been caught within days of
35:58
Speaker 1: Kim Jong Nam's death. And as they sat behind bars,
36:01
Speaker 1: they both kept asking police the same questions. Is this
36:06
Speaker 1: part of the prank? I was told I was on
36:08
Speaker 1: a prank game show. The story that unfolds would reveal
36:16
Speaker 1: a bizarre murder plot with murky intent. That is, unless
36:22
Speaker 1: you understand North Korea's motives in North Korea as in
36:27
Speaker 1: the mall. Perhaps it's business. It's not personal. When somebody
36:33
Speaker 1: challenges you, that challenger must be eliminated. He's sending a message.
36:38
Speaker 1: You know, anyone anywhere in the world, I can get
36:42
Speaker 1: you and it will hurt. If you have the attention
36:45
Speaker 1: of the world and the world will listen to you,
36:50
Speaker 1: then yes, North Korea is going to hand you down.
36:53
Speaker 1: I'm evenly join me next time as we unraveled the
36:57
Speaker 1: most audacious political assassin nation of the twenty one century
37:02
Speaker 1: and try to understand the strange logic behind North Korea's policies, paranoia,
37:08
Speaker 1: and the reasons Kim Jong Nam was a marked man
37:12
Speaker 1: Until next time. This is Big Brother. Big Brother is
37:23
Speaker 1: a production of School of Humans and I Heart Radio
37:26
Speaker 1: and hosted by me Eden Lane. Lucas Riley is our writer,
37:30
Speaker 1: co director and associate producer. Amelia Brock is our senior producer,
37:34
Speaker 1: co director and editor. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, ELC. Crowley,
37:40
Speaker 1: and Jason English. Our fact checker is Aaron Blakemore. Music
37:45
Speaker 1: composed by Jason Todd Shannon and Tunelauters. Original score mix
37:49
Speaker 1: by Vick Stafford. Audio editing by Jesse Nice Wanger sound
37:54
Speaker 1: design and mixed by Harper W. Harris, Audio correction by
37:58
Speaker 1: Josh Fisher, Boy acting by Mark Chung, Daniel Kim, Judy,
38:02
Speaker 1: Alice Lee, Sean mckeeth, Mike Coscarelli and Katie Wong. Special
38:08
Speaker 1: thanks to Ryan Murdoch and Will Pearson. We like to
38:11
Speaker 1: acknowledge the work of Ryan White, Jessica Hargrave and Doug
38:15
Speaker 1: Bob Clark. Sam licensed from the Associated Press, The Star
38:19
Speaker 1: of Malaysia, A Jean France Press, Reuters and Kenny TV.
38:24
Speaker 1: If you're enjoying the podcast, help us get the word
38:26
Speaker 1: out by leaving a rating in your favorite podcast app.
38:30
Speaker 1: Until next time, I'm even Lee School of Humans