Kim Jong-nam killed after pleading with his brother to spare his life
Updated
Kim Jong-nam succumbed to a second attack on his life earlier this week, years after pleas for his life to be spared went unheard by his younger sibling.
According to officials briefed by Lee Byung-ho, the director of the South's National Intelligence Service; the North Korean ruler received a letter in 2012 from his half-brother asking him to withdraw a standing order for his assassination.
Mr Lee said an assassination attempt was made against Kim Jong-nam that same year.
"This is not a calculated action to remove Kim Jong-nam because he was a challenge to power per se, but rather reflected Kim Jong-un's paranoia," Mr Lee was quoted as saying.
"We have nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. We are well aware that the only way to escape is suicide," Kim Jong-nam said in the letter to Kim Jong-un, one of the officials said.
Both South Korean and United States officials believe the deadly attack carried out on Kim Jong-nam at Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur airport was the work of North Korean assassins.
A 'deeply loved son'
The eldest son of Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-nam was hidden from public view for years because his father and actress mother were not legally married.
Although hidden away he was loved by his father, as Kim Jong-nam's aunt and guardian Song Hye Rang wrote in a memoir called The Wisteria House.
"Words cannot describe how deeply Jong-il loved his son," she wrote of the period immediately after Kim Jong-nam's birth.
"The young prince rocked his fretting son on his back to sleep, carried him until he stopped crying, and mumbled to the baby the way mums calm a crying baby."
Kim Jong-nam moved to Russia with his mother when he was eight years old, and spent most of his childhood going back and forth between international schools in Moscow and Geneva.
At 18, he finally returned to North Korea, when he was expected by some to eventually succeed his father.
This scheme was abruptly halted when Kim Jong-nam was caught with his family at a Tokyo airport in 2001 using a false Dominican Republic passport.
He said the family wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland. All four were deported and went back to North Korea via Beijing.
The incident saw an embarrassed Kim Jong-il cancel a trip to China, and served as a catalyst for his eldest son to be ejected from the family.
Kim Jong-nam spent his remaining days travelling between Beijing, Malaysia, Singapore and spending much of his time in the Chinese territory of Macau.
He reportedly had at least six children, and several different wives.
ABC/wires
Topics: world-politics, royal-and-imperial-matters, korea-democratic-people-s-republic-of
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