Kim Jong-nam’s accused killers: North Korean puppets or cold-blooded murderers?
The women on trial for killing Kim Jong-un’s half brother – their lives, lost hopes and how they were lured into the plot
When Kim Jong-nam was a boy, his father, the dictator of North Korea, sat him on his office chair and said, “When you grow up, this is where you’ll sit and give orders.” If the child had fulfilled that promise – if his half-brother Kim Jong-un had not ultimately usurped his throne – he would have tyrannised 25 million people. His pudgy finger would have caressed the launch buttons of nukes. The United States and China would have debated how to manage him.
But as he glanced up at the departures board in Kuala Lumpur International Airport on February 13 last year, the jostling crowd ignored him. He had become just another balding and overweight 45-year-old, in this case one heading for his home in Macau.
As Kim Jong-nam sauntered towards an AirAsia self-service check-in kiosk at 8.59am, an Indonesian woman, in stylishly torn jeans and a grey sleeveless top, slipped out from behind a pillar. She covered his eyes as if playing peekaboo, and then wiped her hands over his mouth, leaving an oily smear.
“Sorry. Sorry,” she answered, before disappearing into the crowd.
A second later, a Vietnamese woman wearing a white jumper emblazoned with the letters LOL threw her arms over his shoulders and rubbed her hands across his face. She apologised, too, before hurrying in the opposite direction of the first woman.
