Assassinated in February 2017 at a Malaysian airport, Kim Jong Un’s half-brother Kim Jong Nam has been revealed in new reports to have been a CIA informant, and had flown to the airport to meet with his CIA contact.
Once considered the heir apparent for Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Nam fell out of favor decades ago, with controversies centered around him trying to use a fake passport to sneak into Japan and visit Tokyo Disneyland. He had been living mostly in China since then.
While he was definitely a CIA asset, it was believed he had ties to several other countries’ spy agencies, including China. China never confirmed this, nor as of yet has anyone else.
How useful of an informant he would have been is less clear, however, as
he was many years removed from being in North Korea, ad no noteworthy
power base there, and was considered unlikely to have much information
on the country’s inner workings.
Instead, the whole value of Kim Jong Nam seems to have been his being a
member of the Kim family, and the intelligence efforts mostly sought
information about his family.
On the other hand, being a Kim meant he was technically in the mix as a
possible successor to Kim Jong Un if something were to happen to him.
Even though he was already working for the CIA, however, the US
ultimately concluded he was “ill-suited” to taking over North Korea.
He died doing what he loved…. Eating Sbarro and being a rat.
I’ve always suspected that his sudden and extreme demotion and exile was about more than taking his kids to a Disneyland.
Of course he went in disguise. Where did he get the spy-like help to make fake passports? It was either an inside job that wasn’t secret at all, or it was a lunatic use of Western spy contacts. Either option suggests the real issue was something else that happened on the trip.
Either he had permission but exceeded it. Or he got help from someone verboten and dangerous to the regime.