This episode of 101 East, Al Jazeera’s documentary programme, investigates the death of Kim Jong-nam, the elder half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Kim Jong-nam was killed in February 2017 at Kuala Lumpur airport in Malaysia, in an attack that shocked the world and turned a family dispute inside the world’s most secretive ruling dynasty into an international murder investigation.
The programme traces Kim Jong-nam’s life — his years as the once-expected heir to his father, Kim Jong-il, his fall from favour, and his life in exile in Macau and elsewhere in Asia — and examines the circumstances of his death, the two women accused of carrying out the attack, and the evidence pointing to North Korean involvement. It also looks at the wider story of the Kim family, the regime’s record of eliminating rivals, and the diplomatic fallout in Malaysia and beyond.
For readers interested in socialism’s history and present, this documentary matters because North Korea presents itself as a socialist state, yet its system is built around a ruling family and a cult of personality. The death of Kim Jong-nam shows how that system deals with dissent and rivalry, and what life under it means — not only for ordinary North Koreans, but for members of the ruling family themselves.