Malaysian authorities have revealed that the poison used to murder the estranged brother of North Korean President Kim Jong Un was VX, an extremely potent nerve agent banned under the Chemical Weapons Conventions of 1997 and 2005.
In a statement, national police chief Khalid Abu Bakar announced the results of preliminary analysis performed on Kim Jong Nam at the Centre for Chemical Weapons Analysis, which is part of the Chemistry Department of Malaysia. He said samples, taken from Kim Jong Nam’s skin and eye, showed VX, one of the most deadly nerve agents available. A tiny drop absorbed through the skin is enough to kill a person.
The announcement follows revelations that an attempt was made to break into the hospital morgue holding Jong Nam’s body.
The police chief’s statement comes a day after North Korea denied playing a role in the death of Kim Jong Nam, and accused Malaysia of fabricating evidence against it for political reasons. North Korea has made multiple attempts to prevent the autopsy of Kim Jong Nam from being conducted and objected to the release of the coroner’s findings. Despite efforts to hinder the investigation, the authoritarian regime blamed its neighbor, South Korea, for orchestrating the assassination.
Curiously, North Korea refuses to acknowledge that the man killed at the airport is Kim Jong Nam.
A statement made by the North Korean Jurists Committee on behalf of the regime lashed out at the Malaysian government, because he died there. The New York Times noted that the statement also doubles as a threat, as the North Korean regime refers to itself as a “nuclear weapons state.”
The assassination threatens to end the diplomacy between Malaysia and the reclusive state. Malaysia is one of the only countries in the world to have normalized a relationship with North Korea, and often serves as a neutral ground for states without formal relationships with the authoritarian regime, including the United States.
Since Kim Jong Nam’s death, multiple people have been arrested—including two women who allege that they believed they were playing roles in a reality TV prank show when they poisoned the North Korean scion. Malaysian police doubt their story, stating that the women practiced the assassination routine in mock sessions in days prior to the murder and that there was little possibility that they were as clueless as they claim to be due to the complexity of the routine and the clean-up thereafter.
VX has been popularly (and inaccurately) depicted in the Nicolas Cage movie, The Rock, where an FBI chemist (played by Cage) has to liberate the old prison island of Alcatraz from rogue soldiers who plan to launch the nerve agent at neighboring San Francisco. In the movie, VX nerve agent can be seen melting through plastic and other hard substances. The movie was used as a source for false reports of the Iraqi chemical weapons program prior to the invasion of Iraq.
Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at @stillgray on Twitter and on Facebook.