North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s half-brother was assassinated Monday in Malaysia, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported early Tuesday, citing a government source.

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Kim Jong Nam was attacked by two unidentified women who stabbed him with “poisoned needles” at a Malaysian airport before fleeing, according to cable TV broadcaster TV Chosun.

Malaysian police reportedly suspect Jong Nam was targeted by North Korea.

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The 45-year-old Jong Nam was the oldest son of former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and held no official title.

In the late 1990s he was thought to be the heir apparent to Kim Jong Il to lead North Korea. However, his chances to succeed his father took a blow when Jong Nam tried entering Tokyo Disneyland using a fake passport in May 2001.

Sometimes a critic of his brother’s rule, Jong Nam had previously suspected he was a target for assassination by North Korean agents.

He had two wives, a mistress and three children, according to a 2010 South Korean newspaper profile in The Chosun Ilbo.

The man who died was waiting for a flight to Macau on Monday when he fell ill, district police chief Abdul Aziz Ali told The Associated Press.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.</s>The half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-nam, is dead under suspicious circumstances in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, reports say.

Korean media outlets reported Tuesday that two female agents with “poison needles,” attacked the elder brother.

The reports — which could not immediately be verified — said he was attacked at Kuala Lumpur airport Monday by two women who fled the scene in a taxi, according to reports on South Korea’s TV Chosun and Korea Broadcasting System.

In South Korea, unnamed government sources reported his “killing” to media outlets.

According to TV Chosun, a cable television network in South Korea, two women believed to be North Koreans poisoned Mr. Kim, 45.

A Malaysian official who spoke to the Associated Press news agency said Kim Jong-nam had been attacked with a spray in an airport shopping area.

Quoted by Reuters news agency in a report published by BBC, Malaysian police official Fadzil Ahmat apparently gave the dying man’s own account of what had happened.

“The deceased felt like someone grabbed or held his face from behind,” he said.

“He felt dizzy, so he asked for help at the … counter of KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport).”

He was taken to an airport clinic where he still felt unwell and it was decided to take him to hospital, the police official went on.

He died in the ambulance on the way to Putrajaya Hospital.

“So far there are no suspects, but we have started investigations and are looking at a few possibilities to get leads,” Fadzil added.

Kim Jong Nam was born in 1971, the son of leader Kim Jong Il and his consort, an actress named Song Hye Rim. But he grew up largely in secret, the result of founding president Kim Il Sung’s disapproval of his son’s relationship with Song.

He left North Korea to live with his grandmother in Moscow in 1979, according to North Korea Leadership Watch, a Website devoted to the ruling Kim family. He spent his childhood at international schools in Russia and Switzerland, before returning to North Korea in 1988, the site said.

In October 2010, the day before Kim Jong Un was announced as their father’s successor, Kim Jong Nam told Japan’s Asahi TV that he was opposed to third-generation succession. “But I think there were internal factors behind the decision, and if this is the case, then we should follow that,” he said.

He did, however, visit North Korea at least once after his younger half-brother took charge — for their father’s funeral in 2011.

Two years later, the young North Korean leader had their uncle — and Kim Jong Nam’s mentor, Jang Song Thaek — executed on suspicion of building an alternate power base.

Since that time, Kim Jong Nam had occasionally been sighted in sushi restaurants in Singapore and swanky hotel bars in Beijing, but otherwise kept an extremely low profile.

Analysts have long suspected that China was keeping Kim Jong Nam — who was thought to have lived between Beijing, Singapore and Macau — in reserve as a potential successor to Kim Jong Un, who has had strained relations with the Chinese leadership, The Washington Post reports.

The BBC reports Kim Jong Nam was reportedly targeted for assassination in the past. A North Korean spy jailed by South Korea in 2012 was reported to have admitted trying to organize a hit-and-run accident targeting the elder brother.

The content of this webpage may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written consent of Bright Mountain Media, Inc. which may be contacted at info@brightmountainmedia.com, ticker BMTM.</s>Kim Jong-un’s older half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, has died in Malaysia, police in Kuala Lumpur have confirmed. South Korean TV said North Korea was behind Kim’s death, however, this has not been verified. TV station Chosun says two unidentified women with “poisoned needles” attacked him. However, police would only confirm that died on the way to hospital from Kuala Lumpur international airport on Tuesday. Kim Jong-nam, the eldest son of the late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, does not hold an official title</s>Kim Jong-nam reportedly poisoned at Kuala Lumpur airport by female North Korean operatives, S Korean media says.

The half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has been killed in Malaysia, the Yonhap News Agency and other South Korean media outlets reported on Tuesday, citing unidentified sources.

Yonhap, citing a South Korean government source, said Kim Jong-nam was killed on Monday morning in Malaysia. It gave no more details.

TV Chosun, a cable television network, said separately that Kim was poisoned at Kuala Lumpur airport by two women believed to be North Korean operatives, who were at large, citing multiple South Korean government sources.

The reports could not be independently verified.

Malaysian police told the Reuters news agency an unidentified North Korean man died en route to hospital from a Kuala Lumpur airport.

The police said the man's identity had not been verified.

Kim Jong-nam and Kim Jong-un are both sons of former leader Kim Jong-il, who died in late 2011, but they had different mothers.

In 2001, Kim Jong-nam was caught at an airport in Japan travelling on a fake passport, saying he had wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland. He was known to travel to Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China.

He said several times over the years that he had no interest in leading his country.

"Personally, I am against third-generation succession," he told Japan's Asahi TV in 2010, before his younger brother had succeeded their father.

"I hope my younger brother will do his best for the sake of North Koreans' prosperous lives."</s>The half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has reportedly died in Malaysia under suspicious circumstances, according to multiple media outlets. Kim Jong Nam is also the eldest son of former leader Kim Jong Il.

Neither the Malaysian nor the North Korean governments have officially confirmed the death of the man who was once thought to be Kim Jong Il's successor. NPR has not independently confirmed the reports.

In a statement provided by NPR's Elise Hu in Seoul, Malaysian police said they are investigating the suspicious death of a North Korean man who became ill at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, then died on the way to the hospital.

The police identified the deceased man as 46-year-old "Kim Chol," and said that an "investigation is in progress and a post mortem examination request has been made, to ascertain the cause of death." It was not immediately apparent whether Kim Chol was a pseudonym used by Kim Jong Nam.

Kim Jong Un, the third-eldest known son of Kim Jong Il, emerged as the heir apparent in 2009. There are still questions about exactly how that happened — as NPR has reported, he was seen as an unlikely successor. But we do know that Kim Jong Nam fell out of favor with his father in 2001 when he was caught trying to travel to Japan to visit Disneyland using a fake passport from the Dominican Republic.

Kim Jong Nam has been described as a "playboy" and also reportedly told Japanese broadcaster Asahi in 2011 that he had reservations about North Korea's hereditary transfer of power.

According to The Associated Press, "he is believed to be in his mid-40s and has reportedly been living in recent years in Macau, Singapore and Malaysia."</s>The half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has been assassinated in Malaysia, South Korean media reported Tuesday, with one TV station saying he was attacked at the main airport with poisoned needles.

Officials in Seoul could not be reached for comment on the reported death of Kim Jong-Nam. Malaysian police said an unidentified Korean had been taken sick at Kuala Lumpur International Airport and since died.

If confirmed, Kim’s case would be the highest-profile death under the Kim Jong-Un regime since the execution of the leader’s uncle Jang Song-Thaek in December 2013.

Kim Jong-Un has been trying to strengthen his grip on power in the face of growing international pressure over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programmes.

South Korea’s national news agency Yonhap quoted a Seoul government source as saying Kim Jong-Nam was killed on Monday. The source gave no further details.

The 45-year-old was poisoned by two unidentified female agents using poisoned needles at an airport in Kuala Lumpur, according to South Korean broadcaster TV Chosun.

The report, citing what it called multiple government sources, said the two women hailed a cab and fled immediately afterwards.

In Malaysia, the police chief in charge of Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Assistant Commissioner Abdul Aziz Ali, told AFP a Korean in his forties was found sick at the airport on Monday.

Airport authorities rushed him to the hospital and he died on the way, the police chief said.

“We do not have any other details of this Korean man. We do not know his identity,” Abdul said.

Kim Jong-Nam was once considered heir apparent but fell out of favour with his father Kim Jong-Il following an embarrassing botched attempt in 2001 to enter Japan on a forged passport and visit Disneyland.

He has since lived in virtual exile, mainly in the Chinese territory of Macau.

Jong-Nam’s half-brother Jong-Un took over as North Korean leader when their father died in December 2011.

Jong-Nam, known as an advocate of reform in the North, once told a Japanese newspaper that he opposed his country’s dynastic power transfers.

He was reportedly close to his uncle Jang Song-Thaek, once the North’s unofficial number two and political mentor of the current leader.

Jong-Nam has been targeted in the past. In October 2012 South Korean prosecutors said a North Korean detained as a spy had admitted involvement in a plot to stage a hit-and-run car accident in China in 2010 targeting Kim Jong-Nam.

In 2014 Jong-Nam was reported to be in Indonesia – sighted at an Italian restaurant run by a Japanese businessman in Jakarta – and was said to be shuttling back and forth between Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and France.

In 2012 a Moscow newspaper reported that Jong-Nam was having financial problems after being cut off by the Stalinist state for doubting its succession policy.

The Argumenty i Fakty weekly said he was kicked out of a luxury hotel in Macau over a $15,000 debt.

Last year South Korea warned of possible North Korean assassination attempts on its territory. It noted previous attempts to assassinate Hwang Jang-Yop, the North’s chief ideologue and former tutor to Kim Jong-Il, who defected to the South in 1997 and died of natural causes in 2010.

Jong-Nam was born from his father’s extra-marital relationship with Sung Hae-rim, a South Korean-born actress who died in Moscow. – AFP</s>HONG KONG (CNN) -- North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's half-brother died Monday after becoming ill at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia, according to Selangor State Criminal Investigations Department Chief Fadzil Ahmat. Another police source told CNN the man who died is named Kim Jong Nam.

Police have described the incident as a "sudden death" pending the results of a post-mortem investigation.

South Korean media is reporting that he was in his 40s at the time of his death.

Kim Jong Nam was the most public of all of Kim Jong Il's sons before Kim Jong Un took power, though most remember him for the scandalous headlines he made.

Reports surfaced that Kim Jong Nam fell from favor from the ruling family after he was caught trying to sneak a visit to Tokyo Disneyland using a forged document in 2001 -- something he denied to a reporter in a 2012 book.

It is not clear when he left North Korea, but Kim Jong Nam spent time living in Macau and China and was absent from his father's funeral in 2011, fueling earlier rumors that he had been banished from the country.

Kim was an overweight and careless playboy, but also as a smart and open-minded man who was willing to speak out against the family, according to Yoji Gomi, the author of the 2012 book "My Father, Kim Jong Il, and Me."

"He spoke out against his father's 'military first' policy," Gomi told CNN in 2012. "He wants North Korea to embrace economic reform and open its doors."

Kim Jong Nam believed his youngest brother, Kim Jong Un would fail as North Korea's leader, according to Gomi -- though the two brothers never met because of the ancient practice of raising potential successors separately.

A third sibling, Kim Jong Chul, was rumored to have been ruled out as his father's successor for being too "effeminate," Scott Snyder of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote in 2012.

The eldest Kim brother's death comes as Kim Jong Un has purged senior leadership around him, including firing the minister of state security -- one of his top lieutenants -- earlier this month.

A report published at the end of December claimed that Kim had ordered the execution of 340 people since coming to power.

The news of Kim Jong Nam's death broke two days after Pyongyang conducted its first ballistic missile test of 2017.

North Korean state media reported that Kim Jong Un oversaw the test of its new, nuclear capable Pukguksong-2 missile, which it described as successful.

Two US officials said the launch was the first land-based test of an intermediate-range missile. In the past, has been fired from a submarine.</s>Kim Jong Nam, 45, the older half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, was found dead at Kuala Lumpur Airport, Malaysian police said Tuesday in what may have been an assassination carried out by North Korean agents.

Malaysian Criminal Investigation Department Director Mohmad Salleh confirmed to local news outlets that Kim Jong Nam died Monday at the airport after becoming sick before boarding a flight. A cause of death has not been determined.

South Korea media reports, citing unnamed government sources, said he had been jabbed with poisoned needles by two women at the airport in Kuala Lumpur. The women are suspected to be North Korean agents and remained at large after fleeing the scene in a cab, according to the reports.

Kim Jong Nam was the eldest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, and was at one time considered the heir apparent to rule the isolated country, which has been governed by three generations of the Kim family.

In 2001, he was arrested at Tokyo’s Narita Airport after trying to enter Japan on a forged passport from the Dominican Republic. He told police he wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland.

After falling out of favor with his father, Kim Jong Nam lived in exile in Macau, a Chinese island known as a gambling mecca. In emails to the Japanese newspaper Tokyo Shimbun, he said the rift had grown because he insisted on reforms. "After I went back to North Korea following my education in Switzerland, I grew further apart from my father because I insisted on reform and market-opening and was eventually viewed with suspicion,” he wrote.

Kim Jong Nam also criticized North Korea’s dynastic succession and that he had no interest in running the country, which remains in the iron grip of his half-brother. It was widely speculated that he lived in fear for his life under Kim Jong Un's harsh regime, and there have been reports of other assassination attempts in the past.

North and South Korean authorities did not immediately comment on reports. If confirmed, it would be the highest-profile North Korean death since Kim Jong Un's uncle, Jang Song Thaek, was executed in December 2013.</s>Kim Jong-Nam, the half-brother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, was murdered Monday morning by two female assassins believed to be North Korean operatives, according to TV Chosun.

According to reports, the operatives, whose whereabouts are unknown, poisoned Kim Jong-Nam at the Kuala Lumpur airport.

Malaysia's foreign ministry is still waiting for information from the police on the identity of the deceased man, a spokeswoman said via text message. The death is under the purview of the home affairs ministry, she said. The police didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Kim Jong Nam, in his mid-40s, fell out of favor with his father after he was caught trying to enter Japan using a fake Dominican Republic passport in 2001, according to Japanese reporter Yoji Gomi, who wrote a book about him in 2012. Kim Jong Nam had been critical of Kim Jong Un, reportedly saying in 2012 that he "won't last long" because of his youth and inexperience. The two brothers have different mothers.

News of the murder comes two days after Kim Jong Un test-fired a ballistic missile as part of efforts to develop North Korea's nuclear-weapons capability. The provocation drew a rebuke from the United Nations Security Council, with U.S. President Donald Trump vowing to deal with the threat "very strongly."

North Korea remains largely cut off from the world, with information tightly controlled by the government. Kim has carried out a series of executions since taking power in 2011, the most high-profile of which was the 2013 killing of his uncle and one-time deputy Jang Song Thaek.

If Kim Jong Nam was killed by a North Korean spy, it indicates that Kim Jong Un felt a sense of paranoia about his own future and wanted to remove any potential successors, according to Namkoong Young, who has been teaching inter-Korean politics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies for more than 25 years.

"Jong Nam has been in exile for years, away from North's politics for a long time, but he is still the eldest son of Kim Jong Il," Namkoong said. "And if there was any move or plan by some elite there to have him replace Jong Un, he probably should be removed."

Kim Jong Un had about 50 officials executed in 2014 on charges ranging from graft to watching South Korean soap operas. Two senior officials were executed with an anti-aircraft gun in August last year on Kim's orders, South Korea's JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reported, citing people it did not identify.</s>K , the half-brother of North Korea's Supreme Leader, may be dead in Malaysia, the result of an apparent assassination carried out under shadowy circumstances.

Reuters reported Tuesday that an was rushed to Putrajaya Hospital after being poisoned at the Kuala Lumpur airport by two women who, according to a South Korean news channel, are believed to be operatives working for the country's neighbor. They are still on the loose. Meanwhile, a source in South Korea's government confirmed to the news outlet that the dead man was indeed Kim Jong Nam.

Malaysian police said that the deceased was in possession of a passport with the name Kim Chol, according to Reuters. Incidentally, Kim Jong Nam's younger brother — the second of Kim Jong Il's three sons — was named Kim Jong Chul. A noted Eric Clapton fan, Kim Jong Chul was reportedly passed over for the succession because his father thought his second son was too girlish.

As the oldest of Kim Jong Il's three sons, Kim Jong Nam was over the dynasty upon the death of their father, Kim Jong Il. That is, until Kim Jong Nam's fortunes shifted, ostensibly over an illicit, trip to Disneyland.

In 2001, Kim Jong Nam was detained in Tokyo's Narita International Airport, where he was reportedly using a forged Dominican Republic passport to visit Japan's theme park — or so he told authorities before they deported him to China. Up until about 2012, Kim Jong Nam was said to be , a Chinese administrative region the Week once compared to Las Vegas.

Kim Jong Nam was not necessarily a proponent of North Korea's dynastic succession.

"Personally, I am opposed to the hereditary transfer to a third generation of the family," he said.

In Malaysia, authorities are waiting on autopsy results before they can confirm that the 40-something-year-old man poisoned Monday was in fact the supposed former heir to North Korea's dynasty.
Kim Jong-nam, eldest son of Kim Jong-il, is assassinated in Malaysia after two unidentified women reportedly poisoned him at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.