The bizarre reason Kim Jong-un allegedly killed his half-brother
Several days ago, the half-brother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un was apparently assassinated inside Kuala Lampur Airport. After several suspects were arrested, the assassination’s bizarre James-Bond-Meets-Jackass back story emerged, along with a bigger question: why would Kim Jong-un wanted to have done this in the first place? A North Korea observer has an answer, and it has everything to do with the collision of neo-Confuscianism with dynastic myth-building and Korean geography:
A desolate but lovely volcano on the North Korea-China border could be the key to unraveling the sudden, mysterious death of an exiled scion of North Korean royalty.
South Korea’s spy agency believes that Kim Jong Nam was assassinated this week in a Malaysian airport as part of a five-year plot by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to kill a brother he reportedly never met. If this is right, the motive likely has more to do with their shared bloodlines — and that volcano — than any specific transgression.
Here’s why:
The volcano — Mount Paektu, which is topped with a deep crater lake — is at the heart of North Korea’s foundation myth, and is used to legitimize the Kim family’s three generations of power. Paektu is emblazoned on the country’s national emblem and lends its name to everything from rockets to power stations to, occasionally, the country itself.
Crucially, it serves as a sort-of geographic incarnation of the Kim brothers’ late grandfather, Kim Il Sung, the most important person in North Korean history. Kim Il Sung saved the Korean Peninsula, according to the official Pyongyang narrative, with daring guerrilla raids against Japanese invaders from his base on the slopes of Paektu.
Because the Kim brothers shared the same exalted and heroic lineage — the “blood of Mount Paektu” — the argument goes, no matter how low profile he was, Kim Jong Nam would always pose a danger. As long as he lived he could share, if indirectly and probably unwillingly, in the avalanche of propaganda associated with the sacred volcano, all of which seeks to prove that the Kims are the only governing possibility in North Korea.
This goes a long way to explaining the disconnect between the coldblooded nature of the alleged assassination and the seeming harmlessness of Kim Jong Nam, an overweight gambler and faded playboy who had laid low in recent years in his Southeast Asian base and who once, according to South Korea’s spy agency, wrote his brother a letter begging for his life.
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Copyright 2017 Liberaland
By: dave-dr-gonzo
David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.
* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.
14 responses to The bizarre reason Kim Jong-un allegedly killed his half-brother
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whatthe46 February 18th, 2017 at 15:13
these people are crazy.
Suzanne McFly February 18th, 2017 at 21:48
Well have you seen the idiot the Americans put in office, they MUST be effing nuts!!!
Tricialraymond February 19th, 2017 at 09:37
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granpa.usthai February 19th, 2017 at 00:42
to some, but I think it’s pretty crazy to pay Russian girls to urinate all over you in a hotel bed just because someone else had slept in it.
whatthe46 February 19th, 2017 at 07:51
lololololol
fahvel February 19th, 2017 at 02:56
seriously, are “these” people any crazier than what you have in your white house? The style and the character are the same – only the means of being seen are different – your guy is taller with a dead waving thing on his head – their guy is short but has his living growing thing on his head reaching for the top of a volcano. BOOM.
whatthe46 February 19th, 2017 at 07:51
dude, i’m not suggesting *45, the GOP or anyone in the stolen WH is any less crazier. they all are.
dogsRgoodpeople February 18th, 2017 at 16:55
Okay , this vote is to determine the craziest of all modern beliefs.
A) A Scientology spokesman has confirmed that Scientologists believe that mankind’s problems stem from brainwashed alien soul remnants created millions of years ago by genocidal alien overlord Xenu. The admission follows years of attempts to dismiss the story, first leaked by defectors, as anti-church propaganda.Mar 16, 2009
B} A virgin gave birth. You MUST believe that if you accept modern Christianity
C) What ever dude
) Kim Jung Dungggggggggg
) Sharingggggggggggg
arc99 February 19th, 2017 at 00:48
You omitted my personal favorite
D) The birth certificate is a fake
robert February 18th, 2017 at 20:24
Fake news story of the week
Better check the references for credibility
Mensa Member February 20th, 2017 at 21:53
AP is a credible news outlet.
robert February 21st, 2017 at 10:21
I was talking about the source of info not AP press
bpollen February 19th, 2017 at 16:23
He was killed because of Un’s back-story?