Kim Jong-Nam Was Killed by VX Nerve Agent, Malaysians Say | Hacker News Reader

Kim Jong-Nam Was Killed by VX Nerve Agent, Malaysians Say

nytimes.com

329 pointsmatt4077175 comments

If we are talking about V-Series Agents, we might as well talk about the secret Soviet Program to develop additional V-series compounds[1] that would be undetectable by the west. It is important to note that there are many vectors of entry for a V-series agent, and in this case, evidence points to an atomized version, as opposed to the dermal administration which is more common among this class. An atomized version targeting the respiratory system and not the dermal would explain why two women attempting to aid "with bare hands" would not have been harmed.

Beyond VX, there exist a plethora of other analogous chemicals, namely the G-Series[2], VE[3], VG[4], VM[5], VR[6] and VP[7]. A notable commonality among these compounds is that very little is known about their effects outside of military research (ie not shared).

Given the military nature of these compounds, there is a reason to believe that this was a military assassination.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novichok_agent

[2] Sarin is a G-series agent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VE_(nerve_agent)

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VG_(nerve_agent)

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VM_(nerve_agent)

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VR_(nerve_agent)

[7] https://books.google.com/books?id=DQw2hVGe0aMC&lpg=PA72&ots=...

It is worth mentioning that a powder form of nerve agents was also created during the time that these things were the fad. Mirzayanov covered the functionality of these binary powder based chems with 5-7x efficacy over VX. It would be highly unlikely for NK have functional quantities of these though.

Edit: Also it would be possible to use a non-military Acetylcholinesterase inhibitor for this attack.

In reply to "Edit": Oh? Really? And might you have a compound in mind?

Seriously. Do you have inside information on a novel Nerve Agent that has not been studied for military use but is effective?

There's an absolutely terrifying book by Ken Alibeck ("Biohazard") about the Soviet secret chemical and biological warfare programme. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Alibek)

Prior US Army bomb technician checking in.

Also look at State Secrets: An Insider's Chronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program by Vil S Mirzayanov, Novichok is covered there as well. ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1432725661/ref=oh_aui_sear... nonref)

> not the dermal would explain why two women attempting to aid "with bare hands" would not have been harmed.

Can you explain exactly how they carried out the assassination without harming themselves?

Each had two different compounds on their hands (or one with a rag?) and they touched his face in sequence. Then only on his face did they combine to become the nerve agent?

What about the last girl who touched his face, how was she not harmed? Was it because he had to inhale it?

At least one of the people involved claims that she did not know it was an assassination. After this VX revelation it makes even more sense for actual assassins use this tactics.

>Suspect in North Korea killing 'thought she was taking part in TV prank' Indonesian Siti Aisyah, 25, duped and ‘not aware it was assassination attempt by alleged foreign agents’, says head of police

>Indonesia’s national police chief, Tito Karnavian, told reporters in Indonesia’s Aceh province that the Indonesian woman, 25-year-old Siti Aisyah, was paid to be involved in pranks. He said she and another woman performed stunts which involved convincing men to close their eyes and then spraying them with water. “Such an action was done three or four times and they were given a few dollars for it, and with the last target, Kim Jong-nam, allegedly there were dangerous materials in the sprayer,” Karnavian said.

>“She was not aware that it was an assassination attempt by alleged foreign agents.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/17/suspect-north-...

one was reported vomiting.

She was harmed.

Interesting tid-bit from Wikipedia [1]

In fiscal year 2008, the US Department of Defense released a study finding that the U.S. had dumped at least 124 tons of VX into the Atlantic Ocean off the coasts of New York/New Jersey and Florida, between 1969 and 1970. This material consisted of nearly 22,000 M55 rockets, 19 bulk containers holding 1,400 pounds (640 kg) each, and one M23 chemical landmine. [25]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VX_(nerve_agent)#US_VX_stockpi...

so if I read wikipedia well, 10 milligrams are enough to kill a person, so we have 124 Tons = 124 000 000 000 / 10 = 12 400 000 000 deadly doses in the ocean. Interesting. I wonder what the half-life of this VX thing is :-)

The ocean may have diluted it a bit.

Depends who finds the poison first : animal life or ocean :-)

Yep. And who knows what the affects of that were. But I do not agree with the claim that this is interesting in this context as it seems irrelevant to the discussion.

> But I do not agree with the claim that this is interesting in this context as it seems irrelevant to the discussion

The discussion appears to be on the topic if we assume the topic is VX or nerve agents in general. I assume this is in line with your intention for posting a series of Wikipedia links on the subject in this thread, which I found both relevant and interesting.

The reasons why I suggested that the dumping of large quantities of nerve agents was an interesting fact is an inquisitive person may ask themselves -

- Is the product still down there under the ocean?

- What could be the environmental impact?

- What were they thinking at the time to dump such a hazardous material? Why didn't they use alternative means to destroy the material?

- Was this standard practise back then? If so what other deadly man made products are under the ocean?

- If they are still working to eradicate 5,950 tons of nerve agents in a single storage complex in Russia, how much did that country dump back during the cold war and would we actually ever find out? TFA says the 5,950 tons is only 14% of of Russian chemical weapons [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VX_(nerve_agent)#Worldwide_VX_...

Those interesting issues could be their own post. For this one I think that interesting tangents would be a discussion about the magnitude of the lethal chemical weapons industries, and the possibility of large dumping operations allowing people to sequester small samples.

I think a lot of weapons are poorly thought out when it comes to the long term, such as land mines. However, since the purpose of chemical weapons is often to murder enough people that you can take their land, deterioration in a natural setting could be built in.

>Was this standard practise back then? If so what other deadly man made products are under the ocean?

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1wa1lrqxQpPqPXwnkmJ...

Your link certainly addressed the question! Thank you.

The article seems to suggest that became common practice in 1990, before when the parent is talking about. I'm not sure how you can claim it's inaccurate and that the parent should RTFA, it's a verbatim quote from the article isn't it?

I'm merely suggesting that the comment claims to be interesting and related but because it is not directly related to the subject it seems off-topic and irrelevant.

Nor did he suggest it was. He said it was an interesting tid bit from the article.

It was indeed an interesting tid bit. I also found your comment about newer practices interesting, and neither comment rebuts the other.

Ok. So why do we want unrelated comments?

It isn't mentioned in the article though.

The Wikipedia article.

> it seems irrelevant to the discussion

Unless the victim ate the wrong fish.

Or try to help the wrong stranded dolphin

There is a fascinating BBC-documentary about chemical warfare history and the british Porton Down military research facility, hosted by Michael Mosley [0]. There is a part where the researcher actually makes sarin and VX right in front of Michael in a fume-hood. They literally watch the VX-liquid condense out of the vacuum distillation apparatus right in front of Mosley and the camera team. [0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07hx40t

Edit: Program available here until mid March: https://tv.nrk.no/program/KOID23002916/mosley-og-de-kjemiske... If you can VPN to Norway.

You can also download the program with youtube-dl without a VPN.

Checked out how youtube-dl does it. Remarkably, nrk.no is satisfied with a faked X-Forwarded-For header.

I saw that recently and can certainly recommend viewing it.

Does VX explain how the two women survived despite using bare hands to administer an apparently skin-absorbable poison? It has binary agent formulations, so each women could have one half on her hand and avoid any contamination by swiping very fast.

> While addressing a spellbound audience of young officers, he would sometimes partially immerse one finger in a small beaker of pure VX for a few seconds. Without interrupting his lecture, he would then amble to a nearby sink and casually wash the deadly chemical from his finger. The teaching point was that VX could not enter the skin instantaneously, and that accidental exposure of a small area would not be harmful as long as the site were promptly and thoroughly decontaminated.

https://www.amazon.com/Chemical-Warfare-Secrets-Almost-Forgo... - Chemical Warfare Secrets Almost Forgotten: A Personal Story of Medical Testing of Army Volunteers, by James S. Ketchum MD

The timeline seems to agree.

Jong Nam felt uneasy after being sprayed and went to KLIA clinic. As his condition worsen, he's transferred to Putrajaya hospital which is 30min away from KLIA. He was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital. I would say 30min to 1 hour for the nerve agent to actually kill someone.

Sorry I don't have source. Just watched the news few days ago on Malaysian TV.

I'm grateful for the edification, but dude, that's a very specific reference from a >$100 (text?)book on a very particular subject. I'm afraid to ask about your background :P

Why are so many questions about the background of people displaying knowledge in this thread? That is what I'm finding disturbing.

I don't know anything about nerve gas, but do know about a couple topics that I suspect would trigger the same people, and it creeps me out that people become suspicious about someone for simply knowing something.

Probably worth keeping in mind that not a few people put cryptography in the same "military secrets" bucket.

Welcome to HN :)

It's one of the reasons I leave this site every day feeling wonderfully inadequate :)

Some people may be ex-military, and are able to say some general things about a topic like this and not get into trouble - as long as they cite a publication available to the public to provide a plausible explanation.

http://libgen.io/ads.php?md5=BE5AF91A8FB3A0705B825B53B01E016...

Library Genesis.

Thanks for the elaborate answer.

So all Kim Jong-Nam had to do to survive was walk into a washroom and wipe his face clean with soap and water?

He would have greatly increased his chances. Assuming that the agent used was run of the mill V/G agent and not a specialty delivery variety.

In reality atropine and pralidoxime(antidote sorta) administration would have most likely saved him, but it would be very unlikely for a medical professional to deduce that the threat was cholinesterase inhibition(nerve agent poisoning).

I also doubt that airports have this on hand in many parts of the world. Maybe in the US where fears are stoked about a chemical attack.

Atropine is commonly used to treat other medical conditions. I would expect any modern emergency medical service to have it on hand (though perhaps not in the quantities necessary... we would need to use all the Atropine on multiple ambulances to treat one patient in this condition).

When I was in the army they taught us that the atropine was the antidote to the pralidoxime (or 2-PAM chloride as we called it).

No, they essentially work to solve the same problem in different ways.

To use a very clumsy analogy, imagine nerve agents like VX are slamming on the brakes of your body. Atropine makes your body less sensitive to the effect of "brakes". 2-PAM takes the foot off the brake.

They covered his mouth and nose, so it's quite likely he also inhaled some.

Bleach, you should really use bleach. It breaks it down instead of just mechanically rinsing it away.

The news in Japan is saying that they wiped it in his eyes, so washing may not have helped.

Wouldn't have hurt, though...

The BBC article (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39073389) mentions that one of the two women who interacted with Kim also became ill, and also that the woman who "accosted" him immediately went to wash her hands. It is not clear to me if this is the same woman or the other one.

Please see my comment with regard to respiratory versus dermal administration. Further almost all research with regards to these agents has been military and thus is not widely shared or known. Even further, the Soviets spent more than 30 years developing 3rd generation nerve agents that would be undetectable by NATO.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novichok_agent

I read somewhere that they wore gloves before applying the poison.

Wikipedia has something interesting about VX:

> VX can also be delivered in binary chemical weapons which mix in-flight to form the agent prior to release. Binary VX is referred to as VX2,[6] and is created by mixing O-(2-diisopropylaminoethyl) O′-ethyl methylphosphonite (Agent QL) with elemental sulfur (Agent NE) as is done in the Bigeye aerial chemical bomb.

So maybe two of them were holding different component and they only reacted after being sprayed on Kim's face. If this is true then this is a very intricate assassination plan.

Yes, that's what I meant.

It could have been an accident that they survived. In this case the assassins dying along with the victim is a feature, not a bug.

True, but I feel like if they wanted to ensure their death, they could've just wiped them with the same rag after Kim was confirmed to be exposed. It seems they just let them go, so I guess they didn't care either one way or the other about their survival?

If the case is that the "assassins" were bystanders that were convinced to participate into it, it is highly probable they were expendable

I'm wondering, the first one would be safe for sure, but how would the second one that apply it be safe? The chemical would have react by the time she apply it right? And since she (either the Indonesian / Vietnamese) got the reacted chemical, wouldn't she die too?

Apply the first one directly to the skin. Apply the second as a spray.

Exactly what I was wondering after reading the article... Something seems to be wrong or incomplete.

The women were expendable and I don't think they knew it was VX, or what VX was. It's most likely they trained with another substance, and were not even told who, where and when the final act would be done.

I bet they administered themselves atropine soon after.

But your theory is really cool, each of them had half of the nerve gas, the second's hand would have been contaminated. This thing will go through your skin.

probably not atropine, a more reversible drug like physostigmine might be better.

They likely took the antidotes that are available for VX right before, chemical-resistant gloves, applied the VX in non-binary form, then washed their hands in bleach and washed it off with water.

No. This is wrong. The far better approach would be "Pharmacologic prophylaxis against nerve agent poisoning." [1] A prophylaxis agent is NOT an antidote.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15792266

Isn't taking the antidote preemptively a valid form of prophylaxis?

What do you mean by contrasting the two things?

A prophylaxis is aimed at preventing an agent from unfolding its effect, an antidote is aimed at reversing its effects. An antidote can only be used as a prophylaxis if it has no adverse effects in the absence of the effect caused by the agent.

Thank you for your comment. I'm familiar with that. I'm asking about this case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atropine#Side-effects

Seems like it works successfully as prophylaxis. It's only poisonous in larger doses, far below what's necessary.

Do we know they were bare-handed?

Seems to have been a spray bottle of some kind?

> Family members and Indonesian officials have said they believe she was tricked into thinking that the attack on Mr. Kim was part of a comedy video, involving spraying liquid on unwitting victims in public. The Malaysian authorities have said that both women were aware that the liquid was toxic.

Tricking two people into using binary chemical weapons to kill someone under the guise of it being a prank sounds like something out of Hitman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitman_(series)).

I find it highly unlikely this kind of high-profile assassination would be left up to unwitting amateurs to carry out, though.

> I find it highly unlikely this kind of high-profile assassination would be left up to unwitting amateurs to carry out, though.

I would have agreed, but the LOL shirt? Whoever set this up (DPRK or not) has a very dark sense of humor.

The Rock came out when I was 13 so needless to say, I'm a big fan.

I absolutely thought VX Nerve Agent was fictional until today.

Not VX, but don't you remember this as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack

I actually ended up in the same article because VX is related to オウム真理教(Aum Shinrikyo), the group that was responsible for the gas attacks in Tokyo. They were also manufacturing VX and are the only ones on record to have used it to commit a murder, until now I guess... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aum_Shinrikyo

To be fair, the form as it existed in that movie sort of was... although not by much.

I'm in exactly the same boat as you and thought VX was fictional until about 10 years later when a mainstream media article made a reference to it.

I had thought it was going to be a fentanyl or carfentanyl aerosol spray, I suppose that might have rendered him incoherent sooner though. The use of VX seems like bragging really (as if the act wasn't already adolescent enough).

Oh yeah... like using Polonium to kill Litvinenko... this is all about sending a message.

Or obscuring the source. If I wanted to cause a Chinese-North Korea conflict, I'd do it in a way that gives me enough time to tie up loose ends and points in a certain direction.

Same with Litvinenko. We will never find out the true story. Was it a message? Probably. But from who to who? Might have been FSB, but there were plenty of other parties that really didn't like Litvinenko and could have used Russian Polonium either to blame the FSB or to tell the FSB not to fuck with them, because they had the means to blame them for random hits (or a million other possible reasons).

> Might have been FSB, but there were plenty of other parties that really didn't like Litvinenko and could have used Russian Polonium either to blame the FSB or to tell the FSB not to fuck with them, because they had the means to blame them for random hits (or a million other possible reasons)

According to the book 'A Very Expensive Poison' by Luke Harding, the Polonium used in the Litvinenko assassination is only produced in one reactor in the world, located in Ukraine. It would have been almost impossible to obtain without FSB knowledge or collusion, leading investigators to believe that Putin had direct knowledge and/or approval.

Lugovoy, the murderer of Litvinenko is now a member or parliament in Russia with extradition requests of the UK being denied. It's pretty clear the assassination had the highest possible approval. Sometimes, things are exactly what they look like.

In fairness, Russia flat out deny ALL extradition requests for their own citizens.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/may/22/russia.lukehar...

A commendable stance, IMHO. (From a most uncommendable unregime).

They also have no extradition treaty at all with the US. Hence why Snowden is there, I guess.

It's certainly not legal loopholes that keep Snowden away from being handed over but a decision of one man. Russian constitution also has a lot of great things in it, like freedom of speech, freedom of association, two terms limit on presidency, immutability of borders and priority of international treaties - all of which were stomped when it became politically expedient.

Indeed, and the message was "I'm insecure about my position".

Someone insecure who does not retaliate is of little concern. Someone who can retaliate or do away with people in remote places using extreme methods is more about saying, "don't cross me or I will get you" and insecurity is kind of irrelevant at that point. It's more I don't want to get on this woman/man's bad side.

I'm also not sure it's plain insecurity. I'm sure there are people not too far removed from him who if they could, would try to get to him -however, he goes to extreme measures to ensure he neutralizes possible threats when identified --including relatives and "old hands".

Although, being such a tyrant (insecure as he might be) why doesn't anyone of the people at his core who live in fear for themselves and everyone else just go on a final mission against him? It's not like he's the only one armed --plus he'd have to remain awake 24x7.

It's probably a rare person who is sane, intelligent, capable of detailed planning, and willing to potentially have a really nasty and protracted death. It seems to me that far more often you have people who are deluded in some way and don't perceive risk (bad planners, may not be particularly mentally fit), rare cases of extremely violent mental illness (not sane, bad planners), the highly motivated fanatic (good planner, sane, tends not to be the most intelligent).

You need a lot of elements to come together to murder someone who is well protected and expects to be the target of violence, while having a state to protect them. The scary thing is that of course, sometimes, this does happen; when it does there is very very little that can be done to stop it, short of you aforementioned 24x7 sleeping cycle.

It reminds me of the Stauffenberg plot. And then there are the bodyguards who got Indira Gandhi --they did not care what happened to them, they "cared" about carrying out their mission. Although, it's quite possible both were equally motivated but one was just not lucky enough to carry things through.

The Stauffenberg plot is pretty much evidence that assassinating somebody protected by a large force is really, really, hard.

Not because that plot itself failed. But because it overshadows the truly impressive number of other attempts at Hitler's life, all failed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassination_attempts...

That's the message we all got, but I think we can agree it wasn't the intended message. "I'm still in control, I can still reach out anywhere, and I don't care that people know it's me."

As you say, reasonably that translates into, "I'm insecure."

Emotionally insecure, sure, but extremely dangerous, obviously.

I doubt fentanyl would work in a public place. Wouldn't he just pass out from respiratory failure until paramedics (who are probably onsite at the airport) ventilated him ?

It's not available right now, but I recommend a BBC doc "Inside Porton Down: Britain's Secret Weapons Research Facility"[0], in which they showed nerve agents like this being created.

[0]: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07hx40t

I wonder if they used this binary combination: O-Ethyl O-2-diisopropylaminoethyl methylphosphonite and sulfur [0][1]. Not sure if that would be consistent with one being in a spray bottle.

[0] http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/831901-overview

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QL_(chemical)

It will likely never be known what compound, but the "spray bottle" tells us that the agent was targeting respiratory system, not dermal. However the use of V-Series agent is a strong indicator of military assassination as almost all research on these chemicals is confined to secret military research. The Russians have admitted to the synthesis of more than 100 more novel V-series nerve agents.[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novichok_agent

While I'm not convinced a binary compound was needed in this case, it is an interesting theory!

"the "spray bottle" tells us that the agent was targeting respiratory system, not dermal. "

I'm not sure this follows. If the cloth was impregnated with one of the binary components and the other was sprayed on the cloth, then VX would be synthesized right there in contact with the skin. I don't know that you could be sure a lethal dose would be inhaled in one or two seconds.

I imagine NK is the sort of regime that doesn't have moral qualms about testing this on, say, political prisoners, before using it in an actual assassination attempt.

Doesn't North Korea has ICBM missiles capable of reaching Italy or Washington DC?

A missile full of VX agent is scary to me. The most North KOrea can fit on a missile is a warhead as powerful as Hiroshima's but a missile full of VX could potentially kill everyone in Washington DC

Plus think of all the implications of transporting VX through international borders. Did China accept having North Korean agents transporting VX in China? Did they smuggle it through fish boats?

North Korea launching a weapon of mass destruction on anyone on this planet, would ensure North Korea ceases to exist. They are just nonsense posturing, and empty threats. In the end we say yes, yes, grand wizard of NK, you are the best. Then we give them some money, and wait for their next silly display.

>North Korea launching a weapon of mass destruction on anyone on this planet

This will mean that China has ordered them to do that. It will not happen in any other way.

> Doesn't North Korea has ICBM missiles capable of reaching Italy or Washington DC?

Not quite. The longest-range operational missiles they have are intermediate-range only, capable at best of reaching targets in Guam and Siberia. They've test-launched a few longer-ranged missiles as technology demonstrators, but even the best of these (the Taepodong-2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taepodong-2) only had enough range to reach India or Alaska.

>Doesn't North Korea has ICBM missiles capable of reaching Italy or Washington DC?

No[0]. The missile Iran recently tested was thought to be a Musudan[1]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_mas...

[1]https://warisboring.com/was-irans-new-missile-born-in-north-...

Not yet. Also given the unreliability of their missiles I doubt they could hit the ocean with any reasonable chance.

Is the chemistry of VX well enough known that countries without access to it can recognize it when they see it?

It is. See the various Wikipedia links given here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13720517 - it also contains the chemical structure. That's actually one of the things which makes chemical weapons far more dangerous than nuclear weapons - it is comparatively easy to produce them without much specialized equipment.

Well, that's terrifying.

Some other famous chemical assassination attempts: http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/a-look-at-assassination-attempts...

As a side note, in some poor, largely rural countries, acetylcholinesterase inhibitors in insecticides are the most popular suicide agents.

How did they find the agent? Do they have a list of thousands of agents to test against, and do they work down the list one by one? How does this work?

My guess is gas chromatography mass spectrometry, which yields a characteristic signature for many compounds.

Does this remind anyone else of The Interview?

WHY?

Why kill people exotically? Why not just use a simple garrote with a thin wire? 10 seconds done, the head would be practically off. I am sure you could get a weird pair of head phones past security. If you poison someone with polonium/exotic nerve agent doesn't it narrow down the suspect pool?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvine...

Because slicing someone's head off requires you to be there, next to them, as it happens. You're standing next to the body as it gargles and bleeds everywhere and security will descend on you in a big way.

Wiping someone's face then bailing is something that the target will shrug off as 'some crazy' until some time later it kills them. This buys you time to get out of the place before anyone realises the full extent of what happened. Hence why they're back in Pyongyang, out of the reach of any law enforcement.

Pyongyang doesn't really care if the world knows it's them or not. I bet they care much more if they lose their highly trained assassins, though.

I would even say it cares that other dissidents notice and understand exactly who did it. Had this been a robbery or some car accident it would not have been as effective. The message is "we are coming after you"

My local butcher in London was killed by Gadaffi for similar reasons it seems http://www.independent.co.uk/news/gaddafi-hit-squad-linked-t...

I remember a long time ago ('97) there was a major defection from the North Korean camp to the South.

Couple days later, in Seoul, the North Koreans assassinated some other guy who'd defected 10 years earlier.

Not only is the message "We're coming for you," but also "you can never feel safe again."

I believe you are talking about a distant relative or nephew of the North Korea's Kim family. I believe the victim was actually shot to death in front of his home by someone with a pistol, which was a big news...

Touch choice. Stay in North Korea and be dragged off to labor camp or get executed. Or defect and get assassinated years later.

Why do something that's so obvious though? Bump into someone instead and you can accomplish the same thing without a big stunt.

It's showing off, importantly, making whoever was protecting Jong Nam (in this case, the PRC) lose face.

If someone just wanted to kill him they would have done it "Markov" style and it anything else said could be banished to the realm of plausible conspiracy theories and everyone would go on with their lives (except, well, you know).

There is no way of denying what happened in this case.

It's like the CIA shooting Snowden to death on Facebook Live to show that the Russian protection there is worthless. Who's next?

Oh I always imagine North Korea had the assassins family chained up. WTF does it matter if they get back?

They're still an expensive and relatively difficult asset to replace. It's not like they're disposable front-line infantry. Assassins presumably have a fair amount of training. If you lose the assassin that's another expense you have to cover. Not to mention the indoctrination required to have someone perform this overseas and come back again.

Why do you go so far out of your way to kill someone publically, notoriously, in the first place? Simply having them die is something a state could reasonably accomplish without the publicity, or at least attempt to avoid publicity. When you use a means of assassination which could only have been provided by a state actor... you're sending a message.

Nobody ever has to admit that Russia was involved with Litvinenko... the DPRK never has to admit their role with Jon-Nam... the means used speaks for them.

That is the point

It's thug 101.

It's far easier to touch someone in public than it is to garotte someone in public and North Korea seemed to think it had some kind of diplomatic right to the body before an autopsy, which would also lead them to believe that their exotic toxin wouldn't be discovered.

VX can be administered by untrained "assassins", or perhaps ignorant dupes, be easily smuggled across borders and have a very high likelihood of success. The DPRK tried to hide the evidence of the poison by attempting to prohibit medical access to the corpse, but it didn't work. Maybe they thought they could get away with it. Maybe they thought it was worth the risk of being exposed. Maybe they wanted to send a message. Who knows?

I think showing that it was likely nation state sponsored was the point. Either by North Korea to scream "we can", or some other nation to stir the pot.

so quick to assume this was done by nk.

I disapprove of assassination but I've got to admit this one scores 10/10 for sheer style.

Certainly the attempt to kill Castro, of all people, with an exploding cigar should rank higher. Just imagine how that CIA brain storming went:

A: "We're tasked with killing Castro. Again. Any ideas? Anything? Nothing is stupid! Castro! Go!

B: "Cigars"

C: "Boom!"

A: "I see we're in mind-melt here. No wonder the western world trusts us with their lives during these troubling times"

If you insist on actually successful assassinations, and score it on cruelty as well, using Polonium should win. The victim doesn't only die a miserable death. It takes two weeks during which they can still give interviews, know they're going to die, and even knows exactly who did it.

And for sheer elegance, I'll give it to the assassination of Georgi Markov by being poked with a ricin-tipped umbrella.

He was dead the very instant that ball was shot into him... he could have realized what had happened that instant and no one could have saved him; it really was diabolical.

Are you dead? If you got a knife and cut out that section of skin/muscle fairly quickly is it too late?

But it's terrifying. Also that video of the CIA people testifying about the heart attack drug. I find the 'we dont know' if it was natural vs assassination scarier as nefarious people are more able and probably willing to use it. When you see all the type of things the CIA was up to 50/60/70's there must be some crazy stuff we'll never know about.

I honestly don't know about how quickly you'd have to cut out the affected region, or even amputate the limb. My guess is that if you were very lucky and it missed all major blood vessels, you'd have seconds to act decisively. Maybe.

As to the rest, yeah definitely. Just consider the B2 bomber. I always wonder what's hidden away being tested in the same way that was.

I think it's a myth. He didn't need to import any cigars to Cuba and if they could get as close as slipping cigars into his supply they could have killed him anyway.

Given that they tried pretty much anything...

There were 600+ attempts on Castro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/638_Ways_to_Kill_Castro

Granted, that's a figure from Cuban counterintelligence, so maybe slightly too high ;) But most of them are documented. And not only 'weird' ideas like exploding cigars - the last one, in 2000, involved 90kg of explosives: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-38121583

The method seemed to be specifically selected to implicate only one person, without any direct evidence that could prove that he ordered it. It's already bad enough to execute political rivals in your own territory, but when you go and do a public "message" assassination in another country, people might start to think you may be too dangerous to be a head of state--even those in your nominally allied states.

The best that can be said about it is that at least it was a plan that actually worked. The infamous "Operation Mongoose" attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, including the exploding cigars, seem more like episodes of a reality show about trying to assassinate Castro than actual murder plots. In this episode, Felix Leiter puts tuberculosis in Castro's scuba wetsuit. In this episode, Jack Ryan convinces Castro's ex-girlfriend Marita to poison him. In this episode, Tamara Knight tries to shave off Castro's beard and draw a dickbutt on his forehead. In this episode, Sam Fisher puts a gigantic snap trap on Castro's palace patio, and baits it with a can of New Coke. In this episode, Sterling Archer steals Castro's "World's Best Dictator" coffee mug, and replaces it with a poisoned red Solo cup. In this episode, Maxwell Smart removes the non-slip strips from the bottom of Castro's bathtub and gives him a basket of scented bath oil beads.

In contrast, North Korea's plan is "wipe military-grade nerve agent all over his face." Maybe setting it up to look like an episode of a prank-based reality show was an attempt to frame the CIA?

But this sort of thing happens all the time. The opinion that Kim is a dictator who really ought not to be allowed to have his own country is already widespread, but here is why he and other practitioners of assassination hang on:

In any state, ideas flow upward while authority flows downward. Let's consider a dictatorship for simplicity: it's not realistic to expect the dictator to think of everything other than for propaganda purposes. The dictator is presented with an endless supply of conflicting demands and requests, with different cost/benefit ratios. For any given idea, including his own, he needs to know roughly what the consequences are for implementing it.

For that to happen, junior intelligence and policy officials have to buy into and invest their political capital in an idea, and so on down the organizational pyramid of government. And the lower you get to the bottom of the pyramid, the more accessible you are to malefactors. So if you're a minor cog in the Chinese foreign ministry whose brief is to monitor North Korean affairs, North Korea might well take an interest in you and your extended family. And if you were to develop a reputation within the ministry for disliking Kim, it might become risky for your relatives to take foreign holidays, so you are incentivized to be cautious rather than prompting your boss to prompt their boss to Do Something about the Kim regime.

The messiness and made-for-TV aspect of it are the means of leveraging sustained attention. A simple shooting not have garnered anywhere near the same level of attention. It's high-precision terrorism as opposed to the mass casualty variety.

600+ attempts to frame the CIA? Some involving large amounts of explosives, and snipers?

That's what I call dedication!

I think you misread my post.

1. CIA's attempts to assassinate Castro resemble episodes from a long-running prank-based reality show.

2. The Kim assassination got some participants to believe the op was part of a prank-based reality show. It could only have been done by a state actor.

3. (Donning tin foil hat) CIA connection! Looking like a prank show is their calling card!

Israel assassinated The Engineer via exploding cellphone.

What is it with these tinpot strongmen? Polonium, mortars, nerve gas... in my day when you wanted someone dead you just shot him.

Do you know about Georgi Markov? Bulgaria concerned about the propaganda fallout if they killed him and it was known, so they injected him with ricin instead.

Mossad attempted to use poison to assassinate the head of Hezbollah. It went comically wrong, with his driver chasing down the assassins with a rolled-up newspaper.

> Mossad attempted to use poison to assassinate the head of Hezbollah. It went comically wrong, with his driver chasing down the assassins with a rolled-up newspaper.

Mossad successfully poisoned the head of Hezbollah by spraying a delayed action toxin into his ear. His driver (who did not comprehend what had happened, and whom he was dealing with) chased after the assassins who in turn fled fearing he was a bodyguard. Nazrallah was for certain a dead man and was only saved by the personal intervention of the the Jordanian king who ordered the Israeli ambassador to provide an antidote or deal with the consequences of a hostile Jordanian state.

The Sheik was administered the antidote on his hospital bed and survived.

There was nothing to laugh about.

I believe you've conflated two assassination attempts, one on Hassan Nasrallah, one on Khaled Mashal. Mashal was the one in 1997 where the antidote was turned over by the Israeli government. Nasrallah was in 2008, and also survived after being treated by Iranian doctors.

> I believe you've conflated two assassination attempts ....

You are right. My mistake.

I think such incidents are more messages about the ability to stage an elaborate and unexpected attack than about the death of the unlucky victim, who may not even be that important in the scheme of things but is chosen to call attention to the political nature of the act.

It's easy to check for guns at customs.

Any spy agency worth a damn should be able to source weapons locally.

Yeah, I added and then deleted that the victims were probably under some sort of security observance already: the watches notice a gun earlier.

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