North Korea’s two traditional allies, China and Malaysia, are both deploying strongarm tactics against the regime, writes Shannon Ebrahim.
North Korea is losing the few friends it has, thick and fast. North Korea’s two traditional allies, China and Malaysia, are both deploying strongarm tactics against the regime, whose leader, Kim Jong Un, is strongly suspected of having been behind the assassination of his half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, in Malaysia, and who continues to launch missile tests in the region.
The excesses of the regime are no longer tolerable even to its benefactors. In the wake of Kim Jong Nam’s death, China banned all coal exports from North Korea for the rest of the year. Coal is North Korea’s biggest export, worth $1.2billion (R15.8bn) – and most of it goes to China.
The Malaysian authorities have expelled North Korea’s ambassador and both countries have banned the other’s citizens from leaving their borders. When North Korea was cut off from the world in the 1990s, it had traded through Malaysia. Now even that relationship seems doomed.
Malaysia believes that Kim Jong Nam’s death was caused by exposure to the lethal nerve agent VX, and it has implicated eight North Koreans in the attack at its airport. If Kim Jong Nam’s son, who claims to be in hiding with his family, is able to get a DNA sample to the Malaysian authorities, it may prove that it was in fact his father who was killed, contrary to North Korea’s official position that it was someone else.
China would take particular exception to Kim Jong Nam’s murder, given that he was living under the protection of Chinese security officials and was en route back to his home in Macau. China’s relations with North Korea have grown increasingly strained since Kim Jong Un took power in 2011, and as leader he has yet to visit China.
Kim Jong Nam’s murder is understandably of particular concern to North Korea’s neighbours as it shows the North’s willingness to eliminate its enemies anywhere in the world with impunity, and its preparedness to use its lethal chemical weapons, of which it possesses 5000tons.
North Korea is not party to the Chemical Weapons Convention, and if it was behind the use of VX in the attack on Kim Jong Nam, it sets a dangerous precedent of carrying such chemical agents across borders.
VX is not commercially available, and its use suggests that a foreign government was behind this attack. Malaysia has also claimed that the woman who smeared it on Kim Jong Nam’s face had symptoms of also being affected by limited exposure, in that she was repeatedly vomiting.
The Malaysians claim she washed her hands immediately after the attack. If she wore protective gloves, it would explain why she survived carrying out the attack.
The targeting abroad of North Korea’s detractors has a long history. In 1983, North Korean agents targeted South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan with a bomb, but it went off just minutes before the president’s arrival, killing numerous others.
In 1996, a South Korean diplomat in Vladivostok was killed with poisoning – the same poison that was carried by North Korean commandos whose submarine ran aground in South Korea the month before.
In 1997, a cousin of Kim Jong Nam, Yi Han-young, defected to South Korea, changing his name and undergoing plastic surgery. After writing a book about Kim Jong Il’s family, he was shot in the head.
Ever since Kim Jong Un ascended to power in 2011, he has allegedly had a standing order for the execution of Kim Jong Nam, who he feared could have been used in a regime-change plot by China or the West as a potential successor.
Kim Jong Nam had been critical of the third-generation succession, but despite the fact that he had articulated that he had no interest in playing a leadership role in North Korea, it is suggested that Kim Jong Un felt the need to neutralise any potential threat.
This has been an ongoing trend since Kim Jong Un came to power in 2011. It is reported that the leader has ordered the purge of several hundred officials during his five years in office.
One of the most notable was the execution of his mentor and uncle, Jang Song Thaek, along with members of his family, in 2013. Jang’s wife protested against her husband’s execution, and was poisoned the following year.
In April 2014, Jang’s ally, the deputy public security minister, was allegedly executed by a flamethrower. In the same month, the vice-minister in the army was executed with a mortar round.
In April 2015, it was reported that the defence minister had been shot by anti- aircraft guns in front of hundreds of onlookers for “falling asleep”, and in August 2016, a top education official was allegedly executed with a high-calibre machinegun for “falling asleep in a meeting".
Amid all the controversy surrounding North Korea’s missile tests and possible murder of Kim Jong Nam, the foreign minister of North Korea is coming to South Africa for a few days in the first week of April, en route to his official visit to Namibia. It might not be the time to roll out the red carpet.
* Shannon Ebrahim is Independent Media's foreign editor.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.