NORTH KOREA: Defectors Discourage Anyone Visiting North Korea

Despite its image of being secretive, North Korea invites foreigners to discover its attractions. But traveling as tourists comes with strings attached, as special guides shadow their every step.

Curious to witness a nation that is consistently in the news for all the wrong reasons, record numbers of tourists are booking visits to North Korea, although defectors who have fled a regime that has imprisoned their families and friends say they wish travelers would choose a different destination.

The vast majority of the tourists are from neighboring China, there has been a sharp increase in arrivals from China in the first half of the year.

In the first three months of the year, as many as 2,000 people were crossing the border into North Korea from China.

With limited tourist infrastructure such as hotels and restaurants, the North Korean government in March announced that a limit on foreign arrivals would be set at 1,000 people per day.

In total, around 100,000 tourists visited North Korea last year, all members of groups that were carefully taken to sites that the regime of Kim Jong Un wanted them to see.

Those sites included the vast expanse of Kim Il Sung Square, usually seen on television with hordes of soldiers marching in long parades, as well as the Tower of Juche and a replica of the mountain hut in which North Koreans are taught Kim Jung Un, the father of the present dictator, was born.

Another major attraction is the Mass Games, in which thousands of children perform tightly choreographed dances and performances in the Rungrado 1st of May Stadium with 114,000 seats, the largest stadium in the world, in praise of the nation and their leaders.

Performances for this year have been abruptly halted after Kim expressed his displeasure and it is not clear when they might resume but still the tourists come.

Tourists should not set foot in North Korea, a North Korean defector said. Anyone who goes there is being manipulated by the regime and told only what the North wants them to hear, he added.

Unfortunately, if they have no other sources of information on what life is really like in North Korea, and they have no chance to see how miserable the lives of ordinary people are, then they will come out thinking that North Korea is a safe and happy place, another South Korea-based defector said. It is not safe and it is not happy.

This defector fled North Korea in 2008 after becoming disillusioned with the regime. His father was a political prisoner and was taken from the family home when he was 9. One of his older sisters has also been sent to a political prison and he does not know if she is dead or alive, he said.

He believes his other sister is alive and still working as a doctor in the North, but he has made no effort to contact her in several years because it would be dangerous for her if the North's state security officials discovered that she was communicating with someone outside the country.

Visitors to North Korea are being told about the 'victory of the Juche ideology' of the country. They are being told of the greatness of the Kim family, he said. I know this because it is exactly what I was taught when I was at school. But it is a lie.

Another defector who defected from the North in 1985 and took two years to reach safely in South Korea, says Pyongyang has two prime motivations for attracting more foreign tourists; one is to feed them propaganda, the other is to earn hard currency, he said.

Since the United Nations introduced sanctions, they have been really struggling, he says. Tourism is one of the few ways that they still have of making any money.

The money that tourists spend to go there, and anything that they use when they are in the North, goes directly into Kim's political funds and is used to buy the loyalty of the political factions and the military leaders that he needs to keep happy to stay in power, said Heo, who is now chairman of the Seoul-based Committee for the Democratization of North Korea.

Tourism is helping to keep the North Korean regime alive and I believe it should also come under the international sanctions to stop that money going to Kim.

Tourism does not support the North Korean regime and the people who visit the North are not expressing their support, said Simon Cockerell, general manager of a North Korea travel agency, Koryo Tours.

In the same way, no travel company that is taking visitors to China would say that their travelers were supporting the Chinese government.

Cockerell also denied that money from the tourism sector is funneled to the national government, pointing out that the hotels, restaurants and their other travel partners in the North all have to pay their own staff and have other overheads.

Most North Koreans never have the opportunity to interact with a foreigner. These are people whose only understanding of foreigners is what they are told by their own government. So when they do meet foreigners, they have a very different perspective.

And when they realize that everything that the state has told them previously was incorrect, he said, they then begin to question other truths that they have been fed all their lives.


Tourism Observer

SINGAPORE: Avoid All Non-essential Travel To North Korea Singapore Government Orders Citizens

Last Wednesday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) issued an advisory for Singaporeans to "avoid all non-essential travel to North Korea", "given recent developments and the unpredictable situation".

Isn't the advisory kind of redundant?

It's like issuing an advisory to avoid all non-essential travel to Florida, given Hurricane Irma.

Or an advisory for coulrophobia sufferers to avoid all non-essential viewing of the movie It, given killer clown.

I mean, even before the "recent developments" - which is just MFA's calmer way of saying "Kim Jong Un has the hydrogen bomb and we're all going to die!" - did many Singaporeans travel to North Korea in the first place?

I believe many, many more Singaporeans visit South Korea.

So MFA should really be advising against all non-essential travel to the land of Gangnam Style because if Supreme Leader Kim starts nuking people, the first to go would likely be his southern neighbour.

But even without the threat of a nuclear apocalypse, there are other reasons North Korea is no longer the irresistible tourist destination it used to be.

The Wonsan Air Show was supposed to be held this month but was grounded.

The month-long Taedong River beer festival, which was supposed to held last month, was also cancelled.

It would have been North Korea's answer to Oktoberfest - but in August and with fewer lederhosen.

North Korea tourism has also been hampered by the lack of a promotional campaign with the slogan "Passion made possible".

Pyongyang could probably use a Formula One night race more than we do.

But judging by its missile tests, North Korea seems less interested in inviting the people of the world to visit than bombing it to Kim-dom come.

So with North Korea being an unlikely holiday getaway for Singaporeans, who exactly is the MFA advisory for?

It could be for someone like Mr Aram Pan.

The Singaporean photographer was in the news recently after he posted a 6½-minute video called Flight Over Pyongyang on YouTube on Sept 2.

Showing aerial footage of Pyongyang shot last year, the video was featured on several foreign news sites last week.

Metro.co.uk said the footage reveals "a city full of skyscrapers but streets largely empty of cars and people".

In the video description, Mr Pan wrote: "It's a rare treat that a foreigner is allowed photography and filming over the skies of North Korea and even rarer to be doing so in a Piper Matrix PA-46 light plane."

He has been uploading videos shot in North Korea to his YouTube channel since 2013 and has a website called DPRK 360, dedicated to the country.

Mr Pan sounds like someone who does a lot of "non-essential travel" to North Korea.

I e-mailed him yesterday and asked whether he is affected by MFA's advisory.

He replied: "The advisory is expected in light of the current global political trends. I think it will primarily just affect travel insurance coverage...

"As of this conversation, I haven't been to the DPRK since September 2016 and haven't made any plans to travel to the DPRK, so I still won't be directly affected by it."

Of course, the advisory could also be meant for me.

The last place I had a haircut was in North Korea last year, and I swore never to have my hair cut again because I want to be able to say forever that the last place I had a haircut was in North Korea.

In the intervening 17 months, my hair has grown long and unsightly. My family and co-workers are begging me to cut it.

And frankly, I, too, am getting annoyed by my own hair.

I figured the only way I could cut my hair and still be able to say that the last place I had a haircut was in North Korea was to actually return to North Korea to get another haircut.

Then came the travel advisory.

I think going to Pyongyang for a trim counts as "non-essential travel".

Looks like I'll be cosplaying as Kylo Ren for the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi in December after all.




Tourism Observer

MALAYSIA: Kim Jong-nam Murdered At Kuala Lumpur International Airport

North Korea has tried to block an autopsy of Kim Jong-Un's assassinated half-brother after ordering Malaysia to hand over his body, it emerged today.

Kim Jong-Nam was reportedly killed by two female Pyongyang operatives who grabbed him from behind and poisoned him at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Monday.

Stooges from Kim Jong-Un's North Korean embassy were seen in a car with blacked-out windows outside the city morgue where his body was taken - and waited there so long they eventually ordered a KFC meal, it has been claimed.

Officials including North Korea's ambassador, Kang Chol, spent hours failing to convince Malaysian authorities to hand over the body and their demands to stop the autopsy being performed were also ignored.

Police probing the death this morning arrested a woman posing as a Vietnamese national calling herself Doan Thi Huong.

They swooped after recognising her from CCTV footage from the airport of a woman in a white shirt with LOL written on the front. She is believed to be a North Korean spy.

But police are still hunting a 'few' other foreign suspects over the Cold War-style poison attack on Jong-nam on Monday morning, it has emerged.

Grainy pictures purportedly show the woman standing at the terminal waiting for a taxi.

Earlier reports suggested Jong-nam was targeted by two suspected female North Korean operatives who apparently attacked him from behind with poison spray.

The 46-year-old, who had branded his younger brother's regime a 'joke', was allegedly poisoned while waiting for a flight and died on his way to hospital.

There were claims he had been attacked by two women – suspected North Korean agents – who sprayed a toxic chemical in his face.

The assassination, which came as North Korea readied to celebrate the birthday this week of the two men's father, illustrates the 'brutal and inhumane' nature of the Pyongyang regime led by Kim Jong-Un, Seoul said.

The head of the NIS, the South Korean equivalent of the CIA, told parliament today that North Korea had been plotting to kill Kim since at least 2012 and that Kim Jong-un was paranoid about his half-brother.

He said: 'After Kim Jong-un came to power, he gave a standing order that Kim Jong-nam had to be taken care of, at all costs.'

And there were reports today that the North may have acted now amid fears Jong-Nam was plotting to defect to the South having served, in the 2000s, as a middleman between disgraced current South Korean President Park Geun-hye and officials in Pyongyang.

Some reports have suggested the assassins held a cloth doused in chemicals in his face and burned his eyes, or stabbed him with a poisoned needle. US sources said a fountain pen may have been used to spray the poison.

This morning it was reported that the taxi driver who transported the women away from the airport has been arrested. He is said to have told police that one of the women was Vietnamese.

The half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un pleaded for his life to be spared after a failed assassination bid in 2012, lawmakers briefed by Seoul's spy chief said today.

Jong-Nam, the eldest son of the late former leader Kim Jong-Il, was once seen as heir apparent but fell out of favour following an embarrassing botched bid in 2001 to enter Japan on a forged passport and visit Disneyland.

He has since lived in virtual exile, mainly in the Chinese territory of Macau, while Jong-Un took over the isolated, nuclear-armed state after the death of his father in December 2011.

The North in 2012 tried to assassinate Jong-Nam - known to be a supporter of reform in Pyongyang - Seoul lawmakers said following a closed-door briefing by the chief of the National Intelligence Service, Lee Byung-Ho.

'According to (Lee)... there was one (assassination) bid in 2012, and Jong-Nam in April 2012 sent a letter to Jong-Un saying 'Please spare me and my family,'' Kim Byung-Kee, a member of the parliamentary intelligence committee, told reporters.

'It also said "We have nowhere to go... we know that the only way to escape is suicide",' he said, adding Jong-Nam had little political support at home and posed little threat to Jong-Un.

Jong-Nam's family - his former and current wives and three children - are currently living in Beijing and Macau, said another committee member, Lee Cheol-Woo.

'They are under the protection by the Chinese authorities,' he said, adding Jong-Nam had entered Malaysia on February 6, a week before his death.

Jong-Nam's murder is the highest-profile death under the Kim Jong-Un's regime since the execution of the leader's uncle, Jang Song-Thaek, in December 2013.

Jang, known to be close to China and an advocate of economic reform in the North, was charged with treason.

Jong-Nam, believed to have ties with Beijing's elite, was a relatively outspoken figure, publicly criticising Pyongyang's political system.

The 45-year-old said he 'personally opposed' the hereditary power transfer in his own family, during an interview with Japan's Asahi TV in 2010.

One of his sons - Han-Sol - also described his uncle, Jong-Un, as a 'dictator' in a rare interview with a Finnish TV station in 2012 while he was studying in Europe.

The mystery woman captured on CCTV, with shoulder-length hair, was heavily made up, wearing a handbag with a long strap over her left shoulder.

The image, released by the Malay Mail is believed to have been taken outside a secondary terminal at Kuala Lumpur International Airport from which regional flights come and go.

The apparent hit follows previous botched attempts to kill Jong-nam, 45, who was estranged from his 33-year-old brother and regarded as a potential threat to his leadership.

It also comes days after international condemnation of North Korea's latest missile test.

The agents are said to have attacked Jong-nam on Monday after taking advantage of a security loophole between his bodyguards and local police, which left him momentarily unguarded at Kuala Lumpur airport.

'The deceased ... felt like someone grabbed or held his face from behind ... he felt dizzy,' Malaysian police official Fadzil Ahmat said.

'So far there are no suspects, but we have started investigations and are looking at a few possibilities to get leads.'

He said a post-mortem examination would be carried out, adding: 'We don't know if there was a cloth or needles.'

It looks like a perfectly staged assassination, straight out of the pages of a spy novel: North Korean royalty Kim Jong Nam, the estranged, exiled half-brother of leader Kim Jong Un, falls ill at a Malaysian airport, complains of being sprayed with some sort of chemical, and drops dead.

But, as with many things about the alleged motives of cloistered North Korea, the unknowns currently far outweigh the certainties.

A look at what officials are trying to piece together as they work to reconstruct one of the most audacious, mysterious assassinations in recent Asian history

Kim Jong Nam, a jovial, overweight gambler and playboy, had embarrassed Pyongyang before - he tried to sneak into Tokyo Disney; he criticized his half-brother - but he's been generally seen more as an annoyance than an existential threat to North Korea's stability.

Why would Kim Jong Un go through the massive logistical trouble - and potential embarrassment - of staging the risky assassination of a blood relation on foreign soil?

Without elaborating, South Korea's spy service told lawmakers Wednesday that the North had been trying to kill Kim Jong Nam for five years. Spy officials offered a single, shaky motive for the death: Kim Jong Un's "paranoia" over his estranged brother.

But the South's National Intelligence Service has a long history of botching intelligence on North Korea and has long sought to portray the North's leadership as mentally unstable.

Some in Seoul wonder if Kim Jong Un might have become enraged when a South Korean newspaper reported last week that Kim Jong Nam tried to defect to the South in 2012. South Korea's spy service denied this, but it's still an open question: Could public speculation that a member of the exalted Kim dynasty wanted to flee to the hated South have pushed Kim Jong Un to order his brother's assassination?

There would seem to be easier, less public places to kill such a high-profile target.

A possible explanation might be found in another nugget provided by South Korea's spy agency: China had long protected Kim Jong Nam and his family in their home base of Macau. Analysts have seen Beijing as looking to Kim Jong Nam as a potential leader should North Korea's regime collapse.

With security, presumably overseen by China, tight in Macau, could there have been a security gap in Malaysia that offered North Korean assassins an opportunity they couldn't have gotten elsewhere?

The details of the attack itself are a tangled mess as of now.

Kim told medical workers that he'd been sprayed with a chemical, which brings to mind past attacks with poison-tipped pens linked to North Korean assassins.

South Korea's spy agency says two women believed to be North Korean agents attacked Kim. They then reportedly fled. Japanese media quoted the government in Tokyo as saying those women may now be dead. None of this has been confirmed yet.

Still, finding out who these women are and who hired them could go a long way to unlocking the mystery.

North Korea has said nothing officially about the death, but that's not unusual. The country's propaganda specialists are masters at reporting only details that lionize the Kim family as paragons of virtue. This clearly doesn't do that.

China may be angry at the killing of a close North Korean contact, so there could be some sort of reaction, possibly back-channel, from Beijing.

But a more concrete punishment could come from Washington.

Cheong Seong-Chang, a South Korean analyst, said the assassination might convince the U.S. Congress to relist North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism, further isolating the already widely shunned country.

North Korean government officials are said to have demanded the body, but Malaysian police say a local post-mortem examination must be carried out first.

There is heavy security at Putrajaya Hospital today where witnesses say they saw a mortuary vehicle being escorted by up to four police cars just before 9am today.

More than a hundred journalists outside have been denied access and are having their questions ignored, it has been reported.

However, it has been confirmed that the body is going to be moved for autopsy, which will take place in heavy security at the large Hospital Kuala Lumpur (HKL).

An unnamed hospital staff member at Putrajaya is quoted as saying: 'Specialists said that Putrajaya Hospital is not adapted for an autopsy and that Kim Jong-nam's body is being moved to HKL, which is more spacious and has better facilities.'

Witnesses said they saw three vehicles from the North Korean embassy at HKL.

Local police chief Abu Samah Mat said Jong-nam went to the airport clinic complaining that he had been sprayed with a liquid, and died on his way to Putrajaya Hospital south of the capital.

In Pyongyang, celebrations had begun for Thursday's anniversary of the birth of Kim Jong-Il, Jong-Nam's father, with no mention of the killing.

Around 3,000 uniformed government officials and women in traditional dresses gathered for an ice skating gala featuring North Korean and foreign skaters. Banners proclaiming 'peace', 'independence' and 'friendship' hung in the venue.

Would-be North Korean assassins have been caught with poisoned needles in the past – which can be hidden inside pens – and an anonymous US official said a similar device could not be ruled out.

South Korea's foreign ministry could not confirm the allegations last night, and several previous reports of executions involving supposed enemies of the North Korean state have proved unreliable.

Jong-nam was the eldest son of former leader Kim Jong-il from his affair with South Korean-born actress Song Hye-rim.

He was once seen as heir apparent but fell out of favour after an embarrassing failed attempt in 2001 to visit Tokyo Disneyland on a forged passport.

Jong-nam has since lived in virtual exile, mainly in the Chinese territory of Macau, as well as Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and France.

A failed attempt to sneak into Japan to visit Disneyland in 2001 may have doomed the leadership dreams of the half-brother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, who was assassinated this week in an airport in Malaysia.

Banished from his dictator father's favour, the exiled Kim Jong Nam frequented casinos, five-star hotels and travelled around Asia, with little say in North Korean affairs.

That ended on Monday when he was killed in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Officials in South Korea say they believe the attack was carried out by North Korean agents.

Despite multiple reported assassination attempts over the years, Kim Jong Nam was still a member of the most important family in North Korea, a direct blood descendent of North Korea founder Kim Il Sung.

Estranged for years from his relatives, the 45-year-old gambler and playboy played a key, if complicated role in the dynasty that has ruled for three generations since North Korea's foundation in 1948.

Kim Jong Nam is the eldest son of Kim Jong Il, the second member of the Kim family to rule North Korea. Kim Jong Il had three known sons with two different women. Jong Nam was born from his father's unofficial relationship with North Korean actress Sung Hae Rim.

Kim Jong Il forced Sung to divorce her first husband and live with him, but Kim Il Sung - the first leader of North Korea and Kim Jong Il's father - never accepted Sung as his daughter-in-law. Kim Jong Il reportedly kept Kim Jong Nam's 1971 birth a secret from his father for several years. Sung was reportedly forced to leave North Korea and died in Moscow in 2002.

Despite his mother's exile, some foreign experts believed that Kim Jong Nam would end up inheriting power because of a traditional Korean value system that favors the eldest son as heir.

Unlike his mother, Kim Jong Nam eventually won the affection of his grandfather, who died in 1994, according to South Korean media reports.

Kim Jong Nam's two younger brothers share a mother: Kim Jong Il's Japan-born mistress, the dancer Ko Yong Hui.

Ko's links to Japan, which colonized the Korean Peninsula in the early part of the 20th century, led some to believe that Kim Jong Nam would outpace his siblings in the succession race. Ko immigrated to North Korea in the 1960s from Japan, where she had lived among the ethnic Korean minority. She died in Paris in 2004.

Kim Jong Un eventually won the succession race and became the North's supreme leader in late 2011 upon the death of his father. Believed to be in his early 30s, Kim Jong Un has carried out a series of high-profile executions and purges, and outside experts say few can now challenge his rule.

Kim Jong Nam's other half-brother, Kim Jong Chol, was once viewed by some outsiders as a potential candidate for leader. But a former sushi chef of Kim Jong Il said the late leader derided the middle son, known as a huge fan of rock guitarist Eric Clapton, as 'girlish.'

The brothers also had at least two known sisters. One is Kim Yo Jong, who shares a mother with Kim Jong Un and who is currently working as a top propaganda official.

Another sister, Kim Sol Song, was born from Kim Jong Il's relationship with another woman, Kim Yong Sok. There has been little information about Kim Sol Song, but unconfirmed rumors in the South say she is being detained.

Kim Jong Nam's aunt, Kim Kyong Hui, is Kim Jong Il's younger sister. She was reportedly behind the expulsion of Kim Jong Nam's mother to the then Soviet Union in the 1970s. Kim Kyong Hui and her husband Jang Song Thaek then acted as Kim Jong Nam's caretaker.

Kim Jong Nam's aunt, Kim Kyong Hui (front, centre), is Kim Jong Il's younger sister

But Jong Nam gradually lost favor with his father. He reportedly spent too much money at a Pyongyang hotel and made wild shopping excursions to China. When he was detained in Tokyo for trying to enter the country with a fake Dominican passport, he sported a diamond-encrusted Rolex watch and carried wads of cash.

Kim Kyong Hui and Jang were believed to have played a major role in grooming Kim Jong Un as the next leader.

After Kim Jong Un took power, the two initially enjoyed great power. Jang was seen as the country's No.2 until he was stripped of all posts and executed in a sudden purge for alleged treason in 2013. Kim Kyong Hui, who was reportedly seriously ill, disappeared from the public eye.

Malaysia is one of the only countries North Koreans can visit without a visa – although Jong-nam was using a passport with a false name for the flight back to Macau.

A Malaysian police statement confirmed the death of a 46-year-old North Korean man whom it identified from his travel document as Kim Chol, born in Pyongyang. 'Investigation is in progress and a post mortem examination request has been made to ascertain the cause of death,' the statement said.

Ken Gause, at the CNA think tank in Washington who has studied North Korea's leadership for 30 years, said Kim Chol was a name that Kim Jong Nam has traveled under. He is believed to have been born May 10, 1971, although birthdays are always unclear for senior North Koreans, Gause said.

It was claimed Jong-Nam funded a lavish lifestyle thanks to benefits from building projects set up by his uncle Jang Song-thaek, who has since been executed by the regime.

After Jong-nam's brother became North Korean leader following the death of their father in December 2011, the exile told a Japanese newspaper that the new regime was 'a joke to the outside world'.

He added: 'The Kim Jong-un regime will not last long. Without reforms, North Korea will collapse.' He also claimed he opposed the hereditary transition of power. Cheong Seong-jang, a researcher at Seoul's Sejong Institute think-tank, said it was possible Jong-nam had been assassinated for damaging his brother's authority. He added that the Reconnaissance General Bureau, North Korea's intelligence agency, had been 'closely watching' Jong-nam.

Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Dongguk University in Seoul, said Jong-nam had occasionally been the subject of speculation that he could replace his brother.

'Loyalists may have wanted to get rid of him,' he added.

North Korean spies reportedly attempted to kill Jong-nam in Macau in 2011, resulting in a bloody shoot-out with his bodyguards.

Kim's killing is thought to be the highest-profile death under the Jong-Un regime since the execution of the leader's uncle, Jang Song-Thaek, in December 2013.

Jong-Un has been trying to strengthen his grip on power in the face of growing international pressure over his country's nuclear and missile programmes, and regular reports have emerged on purges and executions.

Jong-Nam, known as an advocate of reform in the North, once told Japanese reporters that he opposed his country's dynastic system.

They used to call him the 'Little General' but Kim Jong-Nam - once heir-apparent to his father and North Korea's then-leader Kim Jong-Il - fell from grace in 2001 after a spectacular blunder.

On Tuesday, after more than a decade in exile from the North, Jong-Nam - the 45-year-old half-brother of current leader Kim Jong-Un - was widely reported by South Korean media to have been assassinated in Malaysia.

Born from his father's relationship with actress Sung Hae-rim, Jong-Nam is known to have been a computer enthusiast, a fluent Japanese speaker and a student in both Russia and Switzerland.

He lived in Pyongyang after finishing his overseas studies and was put in charge of overseeing North Korea's information technology policy.

But the chubby eldest son of the supreme leader was already seen by Seoul experts as something of a political lightweight when in 2001 he fell out of favour.

He was embarrassingly detained at a Tokyo airport, trying to enter Japan to visit Disneyland on a false Dominican Republic passport, accompanied by two women and a child.

Jong-Nam and his family afterwards lived in virtual exile in Macau, Singapore and China.

Jong-Nam's half-brother Jong-Un took over as North Korean leader when their father died in December 2011.

In an email exchange with a Japanese journalist published in 2012, Jong-Nam spoke disparagingly of Jong-Un, saying he lacked 'any sense of duty or seriousness' and warned that bribery and corruption would lead to North Korea's eventual collapse.

In another exchange with the same reporter in 2012, Jong-Nam said: 'Anyone with normal thinking would find it difficult to tolerate three generations of hereditary succession.'

In October 2012 South Korean prosecutors said a North Korean detained as a spy had admitted involvement in a plot to stage a hit-and-run car accident in China in 2010 targeting Jong-Nam.

In 2014 Jong-Nam was reported to be in Indonesia - sighted at an Italian restaurant run by a Japanese businessman in Jakarta - and was said to be shuttling back and forth between Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and France.

In 2012 a Moscow newspaper reported that Jong-Nam was having financial problems after being cut off by the Stalinist state for doubting its succession policy.

The Argumenty i Fakty weekly said he was kicked out of a luxury hotel in Macau over a $15,000 debt.

Jong-Nam's son Kim Han-Sol studied at university in Paris. Back in 2012, when at school in Bosnia, he labelled his uncle Kim Jong-Un a 'dictator' in an interview.

'My dad (Jong-Nam) was not really interested in politics,' Kim told the interviewer when asked why his father was passed over for the dynastic succession in favour of his younger brother.

n a 2012 interview from his school in Bosnia, a 17-year-old Kim Han-Sol, Jong-Nam's son, said his father had been passed over for succession because he 'was not really interested in politics'.

'I don't really know why he became a dictator,' Kim said of his uncle Kim Jong-Un. 'It was between him and my grandfather.'

It emerged Wednesday that Jong-Nam had pleaded with his younger brother for his life to be spared after an earlier assassination attempt.

'Jong-Nam in April 2012 sent a letter to Jong-Un saying "Please spare me and my family,"' Kim Byung-Kee, a member of the parliamentary intelligence committee, told reporters.

'It also said "We have nowhere to go... we know that the only way to escape is suicide"', he said, after a closed-door briefing by Seoul's spy chief.

Cheong Seong-Chang of the independent Sejong Institute in Seoul said the assassination was 'unthinkable without a direct order or approval from Kim Jong-Un himself'.

Kim Jong-Nam was once considered heir apparent but fell out of favour with his father Kim Jong-Il following a botched attempt in 2001 to enter Japan on a forged passport and visit Disneyland

His killing was likely motivated by a recent news report that Kim Jong-Nam had sought to defect to the EU, the US or South Korea as far back as in 2012, he said.

Mark Tokola, vice president of the Korea Economic Institute in Washington and a former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, said it would be surprising if Kim Jong Nam was not killed on the orders of his brother, given that North Korean agents have reportedly tried to assassinate Kim Jong Nam in the past.

'It seems probable that the motivation for the murder was a continuing sense of paranoia on the part of Kim Jong Un,' Tokola wrote in a commentary Tuesday.

Although there was scant evidence that Kim Jong Nam was plotting against the North Korean leader, he provided an alternative for North Koreans who would want to depose his brother.

t was a secret affair that was so sensitive it was air-brushed from history in reclusive North Korea.

Kim Jong-il, the country's late dictator started a relationship with married actress Song Hye-rim - a star of her time - in the 1960s.

He wanted to keep the affair from his father and founder of North Korea's ruling dynasty Kim Il-Sung.

But Jong-Il would go on to father a son with the actress in 1971, naming him Kim Jong-nam.

Intelligence sources have verified reports of Kim Jong-il's liaisons with Song, Song Hye-rim, who died in exile in Russia in 2002. She was one of the country's first big movie stars, with legions of fans including film buff Kim Jong-il.

Another star of the day, celebrated dancer Kim Young-soon - who escaped to South Korea in 2003 - has revealed how she was jailed for 'gossiping' about the affair.

One day, she met Song who said she was moving into a place in Pyongyang called 'special residence number five' - a home reserved for the family of the ruling Kim clan.

She knew what it meant. Her friend was to become Kim's wife.

In other words, not only was Kim Jong-il forcing a woman six years older to divorce her husband to move in with him but, more riskily, he was rejecting the communist revolutionary his father had chosen for him to produce heirs for the ruling dynasty.

Kim Young-soon became a criminal by repeating the story, losing her family, her privileged status and living for decades at the mercy of the North's security apparatus.

She had not realised just how far Kim Jong-il would go to keep the relationship secret.

In August 1970, Kim Young-soon was interrogated and forced to write her entire life story, including a line in one of the dozens of notebooks she filled about the conversation with Song.

She later speculated an informant had tipped off security about the marriage and her written statement confirmed it.

She was jailed for nine years and it was not until 10 years after she was released - after Kim Jong-il had apparently lost interest in Song - that she was told by a state security agent why she landed in prison.

'He told me that Song Hye-rim was not Kim Jong-il's wife and to forget what I might have heard about them having a child.'

By that time, Kim Jong-il had two other sons with a former dancer named Ko Young-hee, including current dictator Kim Jong-un.

'Once Kim Jong-il took up with his new wife Ko Young-hee, (also known as Ko Yong-hui) they went on to erase any remembrance of Song Hye-rim,' Kim Young-soon said.

Kim Jong Nam was quoted as saying in a 2012 book by a Japanese journalist: 'My father was keeping highly secret the fact that he was living with my mother who was married, a famous movie actress, so I couldn't get out of the house or make friends.

'That solitude from childhood may have made me what I am now, preferring freedom.'

NORTH KOREA: One Week In North Korea

The people of DPRK, otherwise known as North Korea, have all the motivation they need to revere their leaders, especially those that sacrificed their enjoyment to bring freedom to the people.

Kim Il Sung was one soldier that left the comfort of his home for 20 years alongside his family to fight Japan and restore the dignity of his people.
Though he returned alive, his parents were not so lucky.

Mangyondae, the birthplace of Kim Il Sung, brings back the humility and simplicity of the Koreans. It was therefore significant that Kim Il Sung embraced this consciousness and tore himself out of this comfort to seek freedom for the people of his country, sacrificing 20 years of his life.

A 3D panoramic recreation of the liberation war at the Fatherland War Liberation Museum makes one feel the war. A revolving platform takes one through a scenic display of a well-choreographed storyline of the war.

It is an amazing experience that portrays the history from the beginning to the end of the war.

Korea was liberated with the fall of Japan in the Second World War. Kim Il Sung became the hero of the struggle and led the establishment of the DPRK encompassing both North and South Korea with the election of 572 members to the Supreme People’s Assembly from both sides in 1948.

The crowning highlight of the foundation celebration every year is the national parade. It did not hold this year. But other activities, especially cultural ones did take place. I joined other Koreans to enjoy fascinating theatre, circus performances including chilling trapeze acts. I also visited the Pyongyang zoo and enjoyed some games reminiscent of the German “Telematch” at the polo grounds.

I was in Korea when on September 9, the National Day, President Kim Jong Un launched the 10 kiloton nuclear bomb as the 5th in the series of tests to show his military might. He had also been testing missiles that could transport the warhead. I followed the international backlash that greeted the launch; the citizens seem overjoyed at what they saw as a huge feat.

The launches were an important part of the Juche Idea which theorize that nations must have peace for them to attain development and peace is only secured when a nation’s military strength is not in doubt before other nations.

My visit to Pyongyang has changed a lot of perceptions. I used to imagine that the place was swarming with arms-wielding soldiers, that the life of the citizen was regimented, and that they live with the fear of being executed the next minute for the slightest offence. These are untrue, as none of the soldiers I saw carried guns, or even Tasers.

These stories were exacerbated by news that a minister had been shot for sleeping at an official function. The story proved to be untrue because the same minister that was pronounced dead by western media was on TV during the Worker’s Day celebrations. I will now take such stories with a pinch of salt.

The name of the DPRK depicts democracy, the general conception is that democracy has to be electoral. Being a development communicator however, I know that democracy goes beyond just election, it transcends into the realm of participation. In Korea, the people participate in their country’s economy, its protection and its independence at individual level.

Sense of honesty among the people is pronounced. I was able to confirm this from an embassy worker who lost some money while shopping in a remote town. When he reported to the police in the capital, the money was found. The country is also crime-free; no robberies, no kidnaps, no sleazes, no pickpockets, no rapists.

It has five million regular soldiers supported by university graduates that have to undergo military service for a year immediately after graduation. Since soldiers are considered builders of the nation, most construction work in the country is done by them.

I saw many of them at work on many sites. During the recent floods in the north of the country, most of them were directed to abandon whatever work they were doing to help victims of the flood which killed 133 people with over 350 injured and thousands displaced. Only last year, when the floods washed away many houses in the same north, the nation rallied round with thousands of workers to redesign, reconstruct and furnish over 1000 new houses for the victims within one month. Thus, a disaster turned out to be a blessing for victims.

I am confident that the Juche Idea has something for every segment of the Nigerian society from communities, local governments, states to the nation. When each of these political structures takes its economy, security and sovereignty seriously, the chances favour sustainable development. None would depend on another and be treated like a beggar. This brings a cogent point home that political structures in Nigeria at all levels must cultivate internally generated revenue beyond the central largesse they enjoy.

Another thing that dawned on me was the explanation as to why Nigerian leaders do not get the respect that Korean leaders get. Also important is why the levels of patriotism differ among citizens of the two countries.

While Korea got its independence through war and suffering, Nigeria got its own on a platter. Had Nigerians of different tribes fought and died alongside one another, they would have appreciated others more and held eternal memories of the shared grief.

Unfortunately, we earned our independence on the basis of differences and the need to grab opportunities for citizens of our ethnic stock. Politicians were continuously ferried to distant lands to beg them to unite and build a nation, to no avail. This remains the reason for our division and our poor national patriotism.

Lessons for Nigeria, we have to support any leader we agree to elect; that way, only constructive criticism will be the weapon of his supporters and even the opposition. Another is the need for unity and the entrenchment of meritocracy; whatever we do, if everyone thinks that only someone from their ethnic stock should be given opportunities, we may never make progress.

Again, there is the need for leaders and other officials to shy away from the mindset of public office for personal gain. There can only be enough for our need, not greed. Our soldiers should also join in nation building and not only defence.

The culture of outsourcing or contracting is too costly and is responsible for the poorly executed jobs we have all over the place. There may be need for a rethink. I do believe that with better governance, will come confidence in leaders, and with this confidence, citizens will begin to fall in line and do the right thing; and then, we can begin to think of development.

From: One Week Visitor To North Korea

NORTH KOREA: Visiting North Korea At Your Own Risk

Visiting north Korea is indeed at your own risk.

Government lies to the people,people lie to each other,Tour guides lie to tourists.

Otto Warmbier of Cincinnati was in North Korea with a tour group when officials there detained him on Jan. 2.

When Otto Warmbier signed up for an "adventure tour” in North Korea, he probably wasn’t expecting a relaxing vacation.

Such a trip carries unsettling risks, such as arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention. The sights include anti-American propaganda and surreal displays of military might, in a country beset by poverty and starvation.

And then there's the long list of no-nos.

Warmbier, of Cincinnati, was detained Jan. 2 at the Pyongyang airport just as his tour group was leaving the country. The North Korean government accused him of committing a "hostile act" against the country.

Since then, there's been no new information about his or well-being. The tour company that took him to North Korea, Young Pioneer Tours, did not respond to emailed questions about their operations. The State Department declined to comment on Warmbier’s case. Ohio elected officials said they're monitoring the situation and advocating for Warmbier's release as best they can.

Warmbier, a University of Virginia student, is hardly alone in seeking a glimpse of the reclusive dictatorship. Exact numbers are hard to come by, but Uri Tours, the largest provider of North Korea travel in the U.S., estimates that at least 1,200 Americans venture to North Korea every year, despite ominous warnings from the State Department.

“Sheer curiosity” prompted Earl Baron, a seasoned traveler from Massachusetts, to sign up for a tour of North Korea in 2013. Now working as a travel guide in India, the 38-year-old Baron was looking for an off-the-beaten-path destination. North Korea, one of the least visited countries in the world, fit the bill.

Other Americans want to go because it’s isolated, it’s bizarre, and it’s off the grid — a Cold War relic frozen in time.

North Korea is “one of the most magical places still untouched by the outside world,” reads an enticement from Rebel Tribe, a travel agency that organizes trips to the communist dictatorship and other destinations.

Jordan Harbinger, a Rebel Tribe tour guide based in California, said the firm’s clientele aren't typical tourists.

“They think outside the box and live outside the box,” he said

Like other tours, those organized through Rebel Tribe begin in China, where participants are given specific instructions on what they can and can't do inside North Korea.

Harbinger said he keeps it simple: “Always ask before you take pictures. Don’t try to be sneaky. And last but not least, don't talk politics,” he said. “There’s no politics to talk about.”

Andrea Lee, CEO of Uri Tours, is a little more specific. For starters, tourists are told not to wander off without their guide, she said in an email from Shanghai. They are also told “not to take photos of the military, not to bring in publications that could be deemed anti-state, and (to) generally show respect for local culture and norms,” Lee said.

Visitors fly from China into Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, where they are met at the airport by their North Korean tour guides. Those guides “stay with you the entire time,” Harbinger said, making sure you don’t run afoul of the country’s draconian laws restricting where you can go and what you can say.

What do visitors get to see? Not what you might think. An amusement park, a bowling alley and a microbrewery seem to be on every tour group’s itinerary, according to interviews with tour guides and a review of their company websites. Other highlights include the embalmed bodies of Kim Il-sung, North Korea's founding president, and his son, Kim Jong-Il, who led the country until his death in 2011. Both men are on permanent display in glass mausoleums at a monument called the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun.

“On a visit with many tense moments, the time I spent in here was the tensest,” one American tourist, Tim Urban, wrote in a 2013 account of his trip. “We had to walk single file in and out and bow three times to each of the two bros.”

He could not have called the two revered leaders "bros" while he was in the country.

“It is a criminal act in North Korea to show disrespect to the country's former leaders, Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, or to the current leader, Kim Jong Un,” the State Department notes.

Baron, the tourist-turned-tour guide, said his six-day trip to North Korea was fun, fascinating and creepy.

Pyongyang looks like a modern city, he said, but it’s actually a throwback, with no Internet, no Facebook, no Hollywood movies and no cable news.

He had casual conversations with local North Koreans, but constantly wondered if they were staged by the government. When his tour group arrived at the bowling alley, it was filled with young North Koreans. But Baron couldn’t figure out if they were enjoying a typical night out — or were part of the scenery set up to project an image of normalcy to Western tourists.

“When I left I was probably more confused about the country than before I went,” Baron said by phone from Bundi, India. “You really have no idea what’s real and what’s not.”

A few venues that are not on any itinerary for foreigners visiting North Korea: forced labor camps, impoverished rural villages where residents have limited access to food, and anything remotely authentic about average people’s lives.

“You will see what the government wants you to see,” Baron wrote in a blog about his trip. “What I saw of North Korea was a tiny, tiny slice of that country and what I learned was also only a tiny, tiny piece of the truth.”

He and others wrestled with the ethics of traveling there, since a portion of their vacation tab goes to North Korea’s repressive government. But even as they conceded the downside of such trips, he and other travelers said it wasn't as dangerous as the U.S. government leads people to believe.

“Do not assume that joining a group tour or using a tour guide will prevent North Korean authorities from detaining you or arresting you,” the State Department warns in its travel advisory urging Americans not to visit the country. “U.S. citizens have been subject to arrest and long-term detention for actions that would not be cause for arrest in the United States or other countries.”

The U.S. has no diplomatic relations with North Korea, so American tourists who are arrested there, or become ill or injured, must rely on the Swedish embassy for help, the State Department notes.

But Harbinger and Baron said they never felt scared or threatened while in North Korea.

Harbinger said he tried to go jogging once — with permission from his guide -- only to be repeatedly turned back by various guards who seemingly appeared out of nowhere. He said being in North Korea was “surreal” and a bit of a “freak show.” But, he said, “I’ve never felt in danger, never felt nervous.”

Baron said he was able to wander off on his own once or twice, within confined settings such as the amusement park. And he said he was able to “loosely” challenge the propaganda dished out by the guides, although he knew there were limits and he knew not to test them.

The State Department warnings suggest Americans can’t anticipate what might trigger an arrest or detention in North Korea, due to willy-nilly enforcement of the country's harsh laws. If nothing else, happy tourists and scolding officials seem to agree that trips to North Korea are unpredictable.

“The government lies to the outside world. The government lies to the people,” Urban wrote. “The people lie to each other. The tour guides lie to tourists. It's intense.”