When the half brother of North Korea’s dictator was assassinated in an airport in Malaysia this past February, it looked to the world like an amateur assassination attempt—the two women who smeared him with a deadly nerve agent wore conspicuous clothing, and neither they nor the North Korean operatives working with them bothered to cover their faces. Furthermore, they chose the busy airport in Kuala Lumpur where security cameras were trained on their every move.
But that may have been intentional, a former member of South Korea’s intelligence agency said—it could have been a message to the world that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is not to be messed with.
