View of Kuala Lumpur by MASRURAASHRAF on 2009-11-20 03:08:53
The recent assassination of Kim Jong Un’s half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport took the world by surprise. Soon after the incident, journalists and analysts started to look into the history of Malaysia-North Korea relations to better understand why North Korea carried out such a brazen act with a WMD toxin in a major international airport in a country which maintained relatively friendly relations with Pyongyang.
Most of these initial reports on Malaysia-North Korea relations solely relied on online sources. Wanting to go beyond the power of Google web searches, I delved
The recent assassination of Kim Jong Un’s half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport took the world by surprise. Soon after the incident, journalists and analysts started to look into the history of Malaysia-North Korea relations to better understand why North Korea carried out such a brazen act with a WMD toxin in a major international airport in a country which maintained relatively friendly relations with Pyongyang.
Most of these initial reports on Malaysia-North Korea relations solely relied on online sources. Wanting to go beyond the power of Google web searches, I delved into the ROK Foreign Ministry archives. Some digging, revealed that this recent incident was not the first time North Korea conspired to create havoc in Malaysia.
Benjamin R. Young is an Assistant Professor of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness at VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University). He is the author of Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader: North Korea and the Third World (Stanford University Press, 2021). He received his Ph.D. from The George Washington University in 2018. He has previously taught at the U.S. Naval War College and Dakota State University. He has published peer-reviewed articles on North Korean history and politics in a number of scholarly journals and is a regular contributor to NK News.
