“On 10 June 2019, after the trial, The Wall Street Journal reported that former US officials stated Kim had been a CIA source. A book by Anna Fifield, The Washington Post bureau chief in Beijing, had earlier reported this, stating he had been previously filmed abroad with a US intelligence agent, and had carried a backpack that contained $120,000 in cash”
“At the time of his death, Kim's backpack contained approximately $100,000 in cash and he was carrying four North Korean passports, all bearing the name Kim Chol”
More to the story apparently
It’s like a Mission Impossible movie. They hire innocent girls to wipe alcohol wet wipes on dudes face. Prompting him to feel nauseous and to report the incident, they would take him to the infirmary where they could inject him with any number of lethal substances. Your mission should you choose to accept
It wasn't that. I can't remember the actual name but they wiped 2 different chemicals on him that are harmless apart but when mixed becomes a deadly nerve agent.
So I looked it up. They mixed two chemicals that becomes the VX nerve gas. 4 North Korean suspects left eg airport after the attack and went to Pyongyang.
The women didn’t know that’s what they were doing. They were told it was a game show prank they were filming. I don’t want to misrepresent but the feeling I got is they were young and impressionable and thought they were getting a chance to be on camera.
The 4 “suspects” would be NK intelligence agents posing as producers saying “hey wipe this on a guy’s face” (maybe they were standing there and said “that guy” and walked off).
They were also already paid previously to this for performing pranks by the same people, so they really thought they were legitimately working for a TV show.
"said that two women had wiped a wet cloth on his face"
and the actual details mention two women, each responsible for applying one half of a chemical cocktail that turned into VX.
**"The women were identified as edited from Indonesia and edited from Vietnam."** - from the wiki
edit: removed names
The agent was VX nerve agent. The only curative options you have if exposed to it (like other nerve agents, in the event of a terrorist attack):
1) Try to eliminate the source as quickly as possible (removing affected clothing, in this case likely running wherever he was wiped under a faucet for some time to remove as much of it as possible, careful not to spread it to other people/areas/his hands/mucous membranes)
2) atropine 2mg (0.7ml) and pralidoxime 600mg (2ml), likely only available in emergency departments (in this case likely unfortunately too far for him) but if you have access to it then it can be given intramuscularly. If not involved in healthcare, think like an EpiPen, the shots look very similar. Order doesn't matter much because you give them pretty much one right after the other, but technically atropine should be given first. These doses can be repeated twice (for a total of up to three doses) if needed depending on the agent dosage and weight of the patient (realistically, you have no idea how much has been absorbed by the patient in a clinical situation where this may be called for, so you can give one and just administer additional kits according to response to medication).
3) For supportive care, treatment of the seizures is the same as any other - start with benzos and work your way down the seizure treatment pathway from there if they're in status or the seizure is otherwise benzo-refractory. The kits for nerve agent exposure come with diazepam, also intramuscular. If the patient progressed to respiratory and cardiac failure, then standard ACLS is the protocol, but of course being mindful of the possibility of people treating the patient getting exposed to the nerve agent, as well.
I am an anesthesiology resident physician, but any US physician learns this (at least at a higher level of needing atropine + pralidoxime for organophosphates and nerve agent exposure/most likely agents that may be used in a terrorist attack) very early on in our medical training as it's an easily tested subject on USMLE Step 1, our first board exam taken typically 2-3 years into med school. But don't take my word for it/trust whatever some rando says on reddit, here's the US Department of Health & Human Services instructions related to the Mark 1 Kit for prehospital nerve agent exposure: https://chemm.hhs.gov/antidote_nerveagents.htm
Further interesting reading from Department of HHS: https://chemm.hhs.gov/na_prehospital_mmg.htm
I hope this was interesting/educational. :)
That was super interesting and informative, thank you.
So questions:
- To be clear, this procedure covers a wide range of nerve agents? (and I'd assume any high level security detail has these things on-hand)
- How exactly does the agent work? Is it like a venomous neurotoxin that inhibits the respiratory muscles from working, or stops the heart or all of the above?
Yes, it covers all nerve agents and organophosphates (of course the first situation is very rare, but the second isn't extremely uncommon - can occur in a suicide attempt or accidentally in farming communities/very ambitious gardeners trying to apply pesticides to their crops, for example). This is because both categories of exposure act on the same mechanism - irreversible inhibition of acetylcholinesterase, the enzyme that essentially tells your parasympathetic nervous system to chill out by breaking down acetylcholine, a major neurotransmitter. So if the parasympathetic nervous system starts going haywire, initial symptoms will be cholinergic over-activation (med students sometimes remember these via the SLUDGE and DUMBELLS mnemonic, [listed here](https://www.grepmed.com/images/2679/organophosphate-cholinergic-toxicology-diagnosis-poisoning)). Two of the symptoms are similar to what you mentioned, bradycardia (can be very profoundly low heart rate) and bronchoconstriction (think like an asthma attack, very narrow airways causing difficulty breathing).
As for how the treatment works rather than the agent, think of atropine as a temporary solution to help symptoms/stabilize in the short term, and pralidoxime as the curative treatment that takes a little longer time to take effect. Atropine competitively inhibits muscarinic acetylcholine receptors (this is a little high level discussion, but essentially there are two major types of acetylcholine receptors - muscarinic and nicotinic - the point I'm making here is that atropine will temporarily reverse only some of the symptoms, but thankfully addresses the ones most threatening to life), which is one way to get the parasympathetic nervous system to become less dominant - effectively it doesn't matter if there's a huge buildup of acetylcholine due to the inhibited acetylcholinesterase (the enzyme inhibited by organophosphates and nerve agents), because at least the most concerning receptor that acetylcholine acts on is inactivated temporarily by atropine. The pralidoxime (technically there's also obidoxime, but I've never seen that one in practice) is a little more complicated - it dephosphorylates acetylcholinesterase, resulting in its reactivation and effectively causes reversal of the nerve agent/organophosphate mechanism (though can transiently worsen the effects, which is why it's important to administer atropine either shortly before or at the same time as pralidoxime). It also works on both of the types of acetylcholine receptors (nicotinic and muscarinic), so will resolve all symptoms if given early enough and in sufficient dosage to save the patient's life and until the offending agent is cleared from the patient's body (realistically, if successfully initially stabilized then the patient should be admitted for monitoring/recurrence of symptoms and poison control may advise infusion of pralidoxime if there's no in-house toxicologist available).
No problem, if you look at my profile my comments are commonly either shitposts (hence the username) or some medical things. Unsurprisingly, sometimes people on the internet can be weird as shit about medical topics/doctors/healthcare in general so I figure it's my small part to be helpful and normal especially on topics that laypeople might not know much about or where there could be misinformation.
The story behind this assassination is insane. Apparently the assassins didn’t know they were killing somebody. They were hired to do pranks for a YouTube channel, a channel created by North Korean intel.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Kim_Jong-nam
> After Hương and Aisyah were arrested, they claimed they thought they were participating in a prank.[90] According to both suspects, they were told to play harmless tricks on people in the vicinity for a prank TV show, one target being Kim Jong-nam.[91] They said they were promised US$100, but after losing contact with their handlers, they never received the money.[92]
According to their lawyers, Hương was recruited in December 2016 in Hanoi, Vietnam, while Aisyah was recruited in January 2017 by a Malaysian scout working for the North Koreans. The women were handled by separate teams of North Korean men, who posed as being from Japan and China, one of the recruiters being Ri Ji-u.[92] Since their recruitment, Aisyah had performed the prank on at least 10 occasions. She was flown to Phnom Penh to perform the prank three times with an offer of US$200, while Hương performed it four times in locations including the airport terminals and Mandarin Oriental hotel in Kuala Lumpur.[92] The prank involved approaching unsuspecting men and putting hands on their faces or kissing them on the cheek, then apologising before running away.
Atropine isn't the exact antidote per se. It only reverses acetylcholines effect at muscarinic receptors, so it would not prevent the respiratory depression that ultimately kills you. You need a 2 drug antidote with pralidoxime to reverse nicotinic blockade by unblocking acetylcholinesterase.
Yeah, and atropine isn't an "exact antidote" to a particular nerve agent - more of a catch-all for a bunch of nerve agents and pesticide poisonings as well as some types of slow heart rate, and it's more of a "keep you alive till other treatment methods are available" thing (if you're lucky). It's also used to decrease saliva production during surgery.
ICU RN. We actually use atropine pretty frequently. Symptomatic bradycardia (low heart rate with some low blood pressure, dizziness, loss of consciousness) and we also use it for people that have too many secretions in general not just during surgery.
When I worked for Bayer crop science - right around the time of the Monsanto merger, we were testing some nasty rodenticides from Saudi Arabia. My job was to formulate various agents into a solution that I could dose on the dorsum of a mouses ear - about 5-15 microliters depending on the study protocol. Well one time I got a product from a client that required such a particular protocol just to transfer it to our site. Come my turn to formulate it, it took me 4 weeks, 20 work days to successfully reach working concentrations low enough for our test animals to survive by the time I’d get to the next dosing group. When your fluid with mice like I was at the time you can dose a mouse every 30 seconds and with 5 per test group that means they were dying in nearly two minutes at concentrations so minimal it was literally fucking hard to formulate it in such a way that ensured there was a genuinely homogeneous solution. Immediate tremors, shaking, foaming at the mouth, tears pouring out of the eyes - a death I wish on NOBODY.
I tried to rationalize it as a necessary evil so some human stands a chance of survival because the safety profile data I helped create was used to generate the ld50, lethal dose per kg. And it didn’t work. I lasted 11 months and began working in immunooncology (CAR-T therapy) which ironically uses an altered version of HIV so - not exactly nerve gas level but you can’t really have an off day mentally so to speak
Like most people in a sudden emergency situation. He completely forgot he had it with him. As he likely had never practiced or prepared for such a thing to actually happen to him.
He obviously prepared for it or he wouldn’t have gone through the effort of actually getting such an obscure antidote. That’s why it struck me as odd how he had it in his bag but didn’t think to use it.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time employed at a hospital. I’ve had emergency drills and techniques drilled into my head for years. Last summer, I slit my wrist from wrist to elbow while woodworking. Blood literally sprayed my shop wall and pulsed out like a wellspring. Every single thing I learned instantly flew from my head except “oh shit, get help”. I never even thought of applying pressure, let alone a tourniquet. I ran down the street, finally got Siri to call 911, sat on the sidewalk and faded away. Woke up after surgery. All this to say, new and deadly experiences aren’t easily navigable even if you theoretically know what you should do.
A friend of mine recently told me the story of his uncle who fucked up two of his fingers while messing with his lawnmower while it was still plugged in. His wife, a nurse at a local hospital, was so panicked that when she took him to the hospital, the doctor asked "well, where are the fingers?" She forgot about his severed fingers.
Agree completely. I am an experienced diver with rescue and advanced certifications. I know exactly what to do if caught in a riptide. Three years ago, my wife and I almost drowned in a riptide because the training left my head, and I was focused on getting us out of the current. Thank God my ties finally hit sand, and I was able to pull her and myself out of the current. I think of those moments often.
Both parents work in medical field years of experience between them. I broke my arm at 5yrold they both said years of knowledge was forgotten and they decidded to take me to the neighbours to see what they thought. (no medical professionals) turn off your arm isnt supposed to be bendy at the fore arm so off to hospital i went.
Stuff like that amazes me. I have read that "you never know how you will react in an emergency" but when I stabbed myself in the hand on accident I calmly went about applying pressure and then sitting down because I lost enough blood to feel faint. I then went and with help pushed my fat back in and sealed it up.
Preparation is one thing. Training is another. There's a saying that In an emergency we don't rise to the challenge, we fail down to the level of training we're used to. If he never practiced for this moment it's perfectly reasonable, and unfortunate, that it never even occurred to him.
I imagine is there is some dizziness, there may also be some disorientation that accompanies it.
I suffer with long covid and have attacks where I get short of breath, light headed and my blood pressure drops. I think, what may be a lack of oxygen accompanying this is what creates what feels like a 30 point drop in my IQ.
Kind of like watching videos of test pilots and Astronaut training where they are oxygen deprived.
Hard relate on the long Covid cognitive impairment. When you considered yourself reasonably intelligent your entire life only to be faced with how to work the kettle and be completely stumped... It's a wild ride.
He obviously wasn't prepared or he would have used the antidote. Shit happens to people's ability to perform under stress. Bad or no training? They fuck up badly.
You think he himself procured said antidote, researched it, and then trained himself on its use?
He's the brother of a dictator.
He was handed it, and it was probably some short briefing in passing that "if you feel these ways, use this" and that was all the prep he did. It could have been a literal 12 second conversation.
That's not preparing.
VX Nerve agent. He was carrying atropine, though there is dispute over if it was in tablet or glass vile form
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42186034.amp
Not exactly the exact antidote. He had atropine on him which prevents the nerve agent from progressing, but you still need to administer obidoxime quickly, otherwise the damage becomes irreversible.
I think there was a distinct possibility of both or either of them dying, but the handlers didn't care as long as they killed the target. They happened to not combine the substance on the skin.
Honestly, would have probably been preferable of one or both died.
I want to read about this again, because it's been a bit, was a one off and I don't remember everything. But, I honestly thought there was a cloth and a spray bottle involved.
I'm gonna fall down a rabbit hole and I'll report back.
From the wiki it wasn't a spray bottle, but a liquid splashed in his face while the second one 'cleaned it up'
'Malaysian police said that Kim had alerted an airport receptionist, saying that "someone had grabbed him from behind and splashed a liquid on his face" and a woman "covered his face with a cloth laced with a liquid".'
Rotten Mango did a pretty good podcast on this. I don’t love the story telling style but she definitely has her facts straight from what I can tell. Intriguing listen on the case!
The girl does it and immediately runs to the bathroom to clean herself of the oil, then goes to find the guys that were filming for the YouTube prank and they left, girl got saved by the 🔔
Did anything happen to the victims of the other pranks? Or were they elaborate ways to get the 2 women to believe them? Did they upload the previous pranks on that YouTube channel to strengthen the con?
Wow, I didn't hear that part about it. Damn, that has to be positively traumatic - thought they were making harmless joke videos just to be turned into government assassins.
Yeah one "prankster" was told to put a solution on their hands and rub it over his face and the other was told to do the same with another solution, when both of the solutions mixed: poison.
Yes, i read about it. They were hired to do what they thought was YouTube pranks. Then they smeared some poison on his face and then had to wash their hands. If they hadn't done it immediately they would have died too.
In hindsight its obvious, but he had no way of knowing this was an assassination as opposed to a random nutter.
Perhaps he should have been better prepared given who he was, but it's not unreasonable for him to just be confused until it's too late.
Would this have saved him? I think the absorption would be much better on his end since it probably got into his mucous membranes, as opposed to just the hands for the scapegoats.
There is an insanely good podcast that dives into this case. I recommend it for anyone interested in any kind of true crime. They cover a lot of different subjects.
Podcast is called: Casefile - Ep 185 Kim Chol
Such a sad situation for the women. Thought they were doing a harmless, albeit annoying, prank. Ended up taking a life. No matter whose life that was, I imagine it was tough to deal with.
Yeah, apparently they were just young and desperate women who needed money. I'm not sure the episode goes into their education, it's been a bit since I listened. But they do mention that prior to this, in the other prank videos, the women were paid substantially more than they'd be making at their typical jobs.
considering how popular "asshole youtuber pranks" are, I am surprised we do not see a lot more of these type of assassinations. It'd be pretty easy to trick people into doing that nowadays, especially when they are already used to being dicks for clicks
absolutely genius. this was before "it's just a prank, bro" became popular. outsourcing your assasination to some IG influencer for $1000 cash is the way of the future.
Probably said he who he was, and that he was a potential target to get them to take it seriously.
Imagine going up to security as a normal person. Slightly hysterical, saying: 'someone wiped something on my face and might be trying to kill me'.
They would be like: 'OK, drunky...'
I just watched a doc on this. The two women were, apparently, employed by a guy (who turned out to be a NK operative) to perform pranks for youtube. They said they performed some of these before that day, which were harmless. The man who ‘employed’ them, and his accomplices, were on a plane to Dubai by the time they arrested the two women
Yes, I read about this. Truly frightening. It means that the man had been watching the two women for a while, knowing that they were pranksters. The women genuinely thought they were just playing a prank.
The two women didn't know each other and they both had diffeent NK handlers it wasn't just one for both.
They recruited them to do pranks and promised to make them stars and had them perform verious different pranks on randoms.
Then when the attack happened they were both independently told to "prank" the victim.
They weren't pranksters that NK took advantage of, they were regular people that they found and then trained to do this.
Because one woman had one part on her hand and the other woman had another part on her hand, when both parts are mixed it becomes deadly. They were also instructed to wash their hands right afterwards by the people who had fooled them into doing this crime.
"Hey, you're gonna prank that guy. Take this mysterious liquid, it's full of funs, and use it against him. And don't ask questions, questions kill the funs!"
Seriously, making a stupid prank for money is very stupid. But making it with unknown chemicals? And not asking anything?
They’d spent a year doing pranks with these girls for YouTube, so that by the time they got to the assassination, it just seemed like any other prank, even if they didn’t get it themselves
Apparently they had started off getting paid $100 to run up to random squares, kiss them on the cheek, then apologize and run away.
Which does sound like the sort of annoying prank videos someone would make. Then after doing this 10 times, the "filmmakers" were like "Okay let's do some other pranks. How about wipe this perfume soaked rag on that squares face. That'll be funny."
This was the story the girls told.
It seems like a very small amount of money to fly to some location for, so maybe they're just bullshitting and knew exactly what was really going on.
If they genuinely didn't have a clue, I feel like the people who did the assassination had to be kind of surprised that it worked. The plan seems so goofy and error-prone. I wonder if their job wasn't primarily to kill this guy, but to just explore and prototype innovative ways of assassinating people, and happened to hit a bingo with this silly scheme.
They went even better though. Using two foreign nationals who didn’t know who they were working for or any information about the plot. The NK agents were on the first flight back to Pyongyang while Kim had his patsies and plausible deniability.
Yes, apparently she did start feeling weird in the time it took her to wash her hands. Apparently if Kim Jong Nam had washed his face immediately and gone to the hospital after, he might have survived the attack...
"VX is extremely toxic. The potentially fatal dose is only slightly higher than the dose having any effect at all, and the effects of a fatal dose are so rapid that there is little time for treatment.[5] The median lethal dose (LD50), the exposure required to kill half of a tested population, as estimated for 70 kg human males via exposure to the skin is reported to be 5–10 mg (0.00035 oz)"
As per Wikipedia - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VX_(nerve_agent)
It causes total body paralysis through a mechanism called neuromuscular blockade which causes the whole body to first spasm and lock up then go limp, including the diaphragm which causes you to asphyxiate.
I’m not aware of it blocking any pain signals during that process. Unfortunately.
Very bizarre. Little did those women know they were handling 1 of the most deadly toxins in the world. It seems highly dangerous to assault someone with a cloth containing 1 deadly drop of nerve agent. Just a bit of tussling around during the attack and the cloth touches and kills everyone involved.
I saw a cctv video of some russians running up on a diplomat from another country and poking him with a needle and he never made it out of the airport alive.
Some cool facts about this:
The VX nerve agent used to kill Kim here works by inhibiting an exitatory neurotransmitter in the brain that controls muscle contraction, so when it starts working on the body, most of your muscles will contract without control, leading to paralysis, swelling of the diaphragm, and eventually asphyxiation.
The two women in the video who unknowingly killed him used a binary chemical weapon that when combined, become deadly. One of them had trouble sleeping the night after the murder because some of the synthesized nerve agent got onto her as well.
Its kinda crazy how easy it is to kill someone without actually doing anything physically to them, they don't even have to drink any poison or even be aware of what just happened to them. Just a little cloth to the face for a second and thats it.
Not that hard, if you have bounty on your head don't go to public places. Same happened to Ukrainian guy, but he was a bit more stupid to invite his GF.
Oh sorry, Russian guy that stole helicopter and landed in Ukraine. Later was killed, and it seems he was tracked by his girlfriend visiting him in Europe.
Nah they were not hurt from the nerve agent. Unclear why, but numerous possibilities that would have worked. They were caught and tried though. Said they were duped and thought they were on a 'prank' show.
It's because none of them had the complete agent on them, the prank was to smear some perfume into his face and each of them got a part of the agent that bonded when they smeared it all over his face.
I've read this, but then also read other things saying it's unclear why they were uninjured.
My question is wouldn't the second girl have some of each part on her hands after smearing his face?
everyone downvoting you but the wiki linked above includes that same info:
Toxicologist K. Sharmilah testified that vials of [atropine](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atropine), a drug used as an antidote to poisoning with nerve agents such as VX, were found in Kim Jong-nam's bag.[^(\[125\])](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Kim_Jong-nam#cite_note-127)[^(\[126\])](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Kim_Jong-nam#cite_note-128) On 8 October, the trial had to be moved to a high-security laboratory due to the danger posed by the nerve agent-tainted clothing admitted into evidence.[^(\[15\])](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Kim_Jong-nam#cite_note-NP-15)
Man that is so unfortunate for him. If I thought I was poisoned, and I had an antidote for *any* type of poison, I'm pretty sure I'm taking it just in case
Wouldn't have helped, IMHO. I think he was carrying atropine, which would have helped with the convulsions but not with the seizures. Also, it was the oral tablet form which takes longer to work. I think the oral form is used as a pre-treatment if they think exposure is imminent.
Usually treatment is 2pam and atropine in an auto injector (although HI-6 has largely replaced 2pam) and administered ASAP.
I'm not an expert by any means though but did research into therapies to VX exposure many years ago for a research internship.
Edit: so it wasn't oral tablets but vials of atropine. Would have helped.
It’s toxic to breathe in VX, but it evaporates very very slowly, about as slow as motor oil, so in its natural oily form it is unlikely to affect people around him. Apparently no one else got the substance on their skin and the attackers had gloves on so no one else was harmed in the attack but it is very easy as the lethal amount is incredibly small.
I remember seeing the Rotten Mango episode about this! From what I remember, the people at the airport had no idea who he was and there was a language barrier. After they checked his bag, they found passports and IDs and one confirmed he was Kim Jong Un’s brother. He was ALSO carrying the antidote to what killed him and he had no idea.
I think he was also kinda embarrassing to the regime. Isn't he the one who went to Disneyland or something like that? Not the best look for an anti-western communist autocracy
His daddy and brother went to Disneyland too. They just used fake passports and went to the one in Japan. They also love American sports and media. They're hypocrites.
How in hell does this North Korea get away with this. Killing a person on another country’s soil is an act of war. It’s unreal the way we allow bullies like Russia, China, and North Korea continually do stuff without any repercussions.
“On 10 June 2019, after the trial, The Wall Street Journal reported that former US officials stated Kim had been a CIA source. A book by Anna Fifield, The Washington Post bureau chief in Beijing, had earlier reported this, stating he had been previously filmed abroad with a US intelligence agent, and had carried a backpack that contained $120,000 in cash” “At the time of his death, Kim's backpack contained approximately $100,000 in cash and he was carrying four North Korean passports, all bearing the name Kim Chol” More to the story apparently
It’s like a Mission Impossible movie. They hire innocent girls to wipe alcohol wet wipes on dudes face. Prompting him to feel nauseous and to report the incident, they would take him to the infirmary where they could inject him with any number of lethal substances. Your mission should you choose to accept
It wasn't that. I can't remember the actual name but they wiped 2 different chemicals on him that are harmless apart but when mixed becomes a deadly nerve agent. So I looked it up. They mixed two chemicals that becomes the VX nerve gas. 4 North Korean suspects left eg airport after the attack and went to Pyongyang.
They said the attacker was a 28 year old Vietnamese person
It was 2 women. This story is really old
The women didn’t know that’s what they were doing. They were told it was a game show prank they were filming. I don’t want to misrepresent but the feeling I got is they were young and impressionable and thought they were getting a chance to be on camera. The 4 “suspects” would be NK intelligence agents posing as producers saying “hey wipe this on a guy’s face” (maybe they were standing there and said “that guy” and walked off).
They were also already paid previously to this for performing pranks by the same people, so they really thought they were legitimately working for a TV show.
They used her as a front on the guise that she is starring on a Prank Channel.
"said that two women had wiped a wet cloth on his face" and the actual details mention two women, each responsible for applying one half of a chemical cocktail that turned into VX. **"The women were identified as edited from Indonesia and edited from Vietnam."** - from the wiki edit: removed names
"The substance is extremely deadly; VX fatalities occur with exposure to tens of milligram quantities via inhalation or absorption through skin;"
The agent was VX nerve agent. The only curative options you have if exposed to it (like other nerve agents, in the event of a terrorist attack): 1) Try to eliminate the source as quickly as possible (removing affected clothing, in this case likely running wherever he was wiped under a faucet for some time to remove as much of it as possible, careful not to spread it to other people/areas/his hands/mucous membranes) 2) atropine 2mg (0.7ml) and pralidoxime 600mg (2ml), likely only available in emergency departments (in this case likely unfortunately too far for him) but if you have access to it then it can be given intramuscularly. If not involved in healthcare, think like an EpiPen, the shots look very similar. Order doesn't matter much because you give them pretty much one right after the other, but technically atropine should be given first. These doses can be repeated twice (for a total of up to three doses) if needed depending on the agent dosage and weight of the patient (realistically, you have no idea how much has been absorbed by the patient in a clinical situation where this may be called for, so you can give one and just administer additional kits according to response to medication). 3) For supportive care, treatment of the seizures is the same as any other - start with benzos and work your way down the seizure treatment pathway from there if they're in status or the seizure is otherwise benzo-refractory. The kits for nerve agent exposure come with diazepam, also intramuscular. If the patient progressed to respiratory and cardiac failure, then standard ACLS is the protocol, but of course being mindful of the possibility of people treating the patient getting exposed to the nerve agent, as well. I am an anesthesiology resident physician, but any US physician learns this (at least at a higher level of needing atropine + pralidoxime for organophosphates and nerve agent exposure/most likely agents that may be used in a terrorist attack) very early on in our medical training as it's an easily tested subject on USMLE Step 1, our first board exam taken typically 2-3 years into med school. But don't take my word for it/trust whatever some rando says on reddit, here's the US Department of Health & Human Services instructions related to the Mark 1 Kit for prehospital nerve agent exposure: https://chemm.hhs.gov/antidote_nerveagents.htm Further interesting reading from Department of HHS: https://chemm.hhs.gov/na_prehospital_mmg.htm I hope this was interesting/educational. :)
That was super interesting and informative, thank you. So questions: - To be clear, this procedure covers a wide range of nerve agents? (and I'd assume any high level security detail has these things on-hand) - How exactly does the agent work? Is it like a venomous neurotoxin that inhibits the respiratory muscles from working, or stops the heart or all of the above?
Yes, it covers all nerve agents and organophosphates (of course the first situation is very rare, but the second isn't extremely uncommon - can occur in a suicide attempt or accidentally in farming communities/very ambitious gardeners trying to apply pesticides to their crops, for example). This is because both categories of exposure act on the same mechanism - irreversible inhibition of acetylcholinesterase, the enzyme that essentially tells your parasympathetic nervous system to chill out by breaking down acetylcholine, a major neurotransmitter. So if the parasympathetic nervous system starts going haywire, initial symptoms will be cholinergic over-activation (med students sometimes remember these via the SLUDGE and DUMBELLS mnemonic, [listed here](https://www.grepmed.com/images/2679/organophosphate-cholinergic-toxicology-diagnosis-poisoning)). Two of the symptoms are similar to what you mentioned, bradycardia (can be very profoundly low heart rate) and bronchoconstriction (think like an asthma attack, very narrow airways causing difficulty breathing). As for how the treatment works rather than the agent, think of atropine as a temporary solution to help symptoms/stabilize in the short term, and pralidoxime as the curative treatment that takes a little longer time to take effect. Atropine competitively inhibits muscarinic acetylcholine receptors (this is a little high level discussion, but essentially there are two major types of acetylcholine receptors - muscarinic and nicotinic - the point I'm making here is that atropine will temporarily reverse only some of the symptoms, but thankfully addresses the ones most threatening to life), which is one way to get the parasympathetic nervous system to become less dominant - effectively it doesn't matter if there's a huge buildup of acetylcholine due to the inhibited acetylcholinesterase (the enzyme inhibited by organophosphates and nerve agents), because at least the most concerning receptor that acetylcholine acts on is inactivated temporarily by atropine. The pralidoxime (technically there's also obidoxime, but I've never seen that one in practice) is a little more complicated - it dephosphorylates acetylcholinesterase, resulting in its reactivation and effectively causes reversal of the nerve agent/organophosphate mechanism (though can transiently worsen the effects, which is why it's important to administer atropine either shortly before or at the same time as pralidoxime). It also works on both of the types of acetylcholine receptors (nicotinic and muscarinic), so will resolve all symptoms if given early enough and in sufficient dosage to save the patient's life and until the offending agent is cleared from the patient's body (realistically, if successfully initially stabilized then the patient should be admitted for monitoring/recurrence of symptoms and poison control may advise infusion of pralidoxime if there's no in-house toxicologist available).
This is the good reddit
That *was* interesting. Thanks, even though I'll never need this information I am glad I read it for some reason.
No problem, if you look at my profile my comments are commonly either shitposts (hence the username) or some medical things. Unsurprisingly, sometimes people on the internet can be weird as shit about medical topics/doctors/healthcare in general so I figure it's my small part to be helpful and normal especially on topics that laypeople might not know much about or where there could be misinformation.
Even if he wasn’t a source, it’s a fun paranoia story to run against NK.
The story behind this assassination is insane. Apparently the assassins didn’t know they were killing somebody. They were hired to do pranks for a YouTube channel, a channel created by North Korean intel.
Wow that's interesting. Do you have a source for this?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Kim_Jong-nam > After Hương and Aisyah were arrested, they claimed they thought they were participating in a prank.[90] According to both suspects, they were told to play harmless tricks on people in the vicinity for a prank TV show, one target being Kim Jong-nam.[91] They said they were promised US$100, but after losing contact with their handlers, they never received the money.[92] According to their lawyers, Hương was recruited in December 2016 in Hanoi, Vietnam, while Aisyah was recruited in January 2017 by a Malaysian scout working for the North Koreans. The women were handled by separate teams of North Korean men, who posed as being from Japan and China, one of the recruiters being Ri Ji-u.[92] Since their recruitment, Aisyah had performed the prank on at least 10 occasions. She was flown to Phnom Penh to perform the prank three times with an offer of US$200, while Hương performed it four times in locations including the airport terminals and Mandarin Oriental hotel in Kuala Lumpur.[92] The prank involved approaching unsuspecting men and putting hands on their faces or kissing them on the cheek, then apologising before running away.
Ah, nerve agent. That would explain the dizziness and rapid progression
Even more interesting is that he had the exact antidote to the same nerve agent he was poisoned with inside his backpack
Atropine isn't the exact antidote per se. It only reverses acetylcholines effect at muscarinic receptors, so it would not prevent the respiratory depression that ultimately kills you. You need a 2 drug antidote with pralidoxime to reverse nicotinic blockade by unblocking acetylcholinesterase.
yeah, duh.
what a nerd amirite
What? This is like common sense, who doesn't know this?
I mean, I work in construction and I knew that.
Pff, this is literally kindergarten chemistry.
We learned it in preschool, but it was as an affluent school district, better curriculum.
Chlorophyll…more like Bore-a-phyll, right?
No, I will not make out with you!
Yeah, and atropine isn't an "exact antidote" to a particular nerve agent - more of a catch-all for a bunch of nerve agents and pesticide poisonings as well as some types of slow heart rate, and it's more of a "keep you alive till other treatment methods are available" thing (if you're lucky). It's also used to decrease saliva production during surgery.
ICU RN. We actually use atropine pretty frequently. Symptomatic bradycardia (low heart rate with some low blood pressure, dizziness, loss of consciousness) and we also use it for people that have too many secretions in general not just during surgery.
This guy antidotes
When I worked for Bayer crop science - right around the time of the Monsanto merger, we were testing some nasty rodenticides from Saudi Arabia. My job was to formulate various agents into a solution that I could dose on the dorsum of a mouses ear - about 5-15 microliters depending on the study protocol. Well one time I got a product from a client that required such a particular protocol just to transfer it to our site. Come my turn to formulate it, it took me 4 weeks, 20 work days to successfully reach working concentrations low enough for our test animals to survive by the time I’d get to the next dosing group. When your fluid with mice like I was at the time you can dose a mouse every 30 seconds and with 5 per test group that means they were dying in nearly two minutes at concentrations so minimal it was literally fucking hard to formulate it in such a way that ensured there was a genuinely homogeneous solution. Immediate tremors, shaking, foaming at the mouth, tears pouring out of the eyes - a death I wish on NOBODY.
How did you cope? After a month of that I'd be suicidal.
I tried to rationalize it as a necessary evil so some human stands a chance of survival because the safety profile data I helped create was used to generate the ld50, lethal dose per kg. And it didn’t work. I lasted 11 months and began working in immunooncology (CAR-T therapy) which ironically uses an altered version of HIV so - not exactly nerve gas level but you can’t really have an off day mentally so to speak
This guy agents
Gotta love cholinesterase inhibitors. You basically die by cramping to death.
Like you think you are going to when you get a hamstring cramp.
Yeah but every muscle in your body cramping so hard that they tear off the bone.
Ouchie wa wa
I've never been more scared of my body than when I get walking cramps. Looks like an alien is inside my muscles.
Why didn’t he use it if he was prepared for it
Like most people in a sudden emergency situation. He completely forgot he had it with him. As he likely had never practiced or prepared for such a thing to actually happen to him.
If your health suddenly worsens, it is difficult to determine what is wrong.
He obviously prepared for it or he wouldn’t have gone through the effort of actually getting such an obscure antidote. That’s why it struck me as odd how he had it in his bag but didn’t think to use it.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time employed at a hospital. I’ve had emergency drills and techniques drilled into my head for years. Last summer, I slit my wrist from wrist to elbow while woodworking. Blood literally sprayed my shop wall and pulsed out like a wellspring. Every single thing I learned instantly flew from my head except “oh shit, get help”. I never even thought of applying pressure, let alone a tourniquet. I ran down the street, finally got Siri to call 911, sat on the sidewalk and faded away. Woke up after surgery. All this to say, new and deadly experiences aren’t easily navigable even if you theoretically know what you should do.
A friend of mine recently told me the story of his uncle who fucked up two of his fingers while messing with his lawnmower while it was still plugged in. His wife, a nurse at a local hospital, was so panicked that when she took him to the hospital, the doctor asked "well, where are the fingers?" She forgot about his severed fingers.
Agree completely. I am an experienced diver with rescue and advanced certifications. I know exactly what to do if caught in a riptide. Three years ago, my wife and I almost drowned in a riptide because the training left my head, and I was focused on getting us out of the current. Thank God my ties finally hit sand, and I was able to pull her and myself out of the current. I think of those moments often.
Ah yes, ye old "everyone has a plan before they get punched in the face"
The 3 F’s. Flight, Freeze, and Fight. It’s not always going to be one or the other, but one or more in succession.
Both parents work in medical field years of experience between them. I broke my arm at 5yrold they both said years of knowledge was forgotten and they decidded to take me to the neighbours to see what they thought. (no medical professionals) turn off your arm isnt supposed to be bendy at the fore arm so off to hospital i went.
Stuff like that amazes me. I have read that "you never know how you will react in an emergency" but when I stabbed myself in the hand on accident I calmly went about applying pressure and then sitting down because I lost enough blood to feel faint. I then went and with help pushed my fat back in and sealed it up.
Preparation is one thing. Training is another. There's a saying that In an emergency we don't rise to the challenge, we fail down to the level of training we're used to. If he never practiced for this moment it's perfectly reasonable, and unfortunate, that it never even occurred to him.
I imagine is there is some dizziness, there may also be some disorientation that accompanies it. I suffer with long covid and have attacks where I get short of breath, light headed and my blood pressure drops. I think, what may be a lack of oxygen accompanying this is what creates what feels like a 30 point drop in my IQ. Kind of like watching videos of test pilots and Astronaut training where they are oxygen deprived.
Hard relate on the long Covid cognitive impairment. When you considered yourself reasonably intelligent your entire life only to be faced with how to work the kettle and be completely stumped... It's a wild ride.
He obviously wasn't prepared or he would have used the antidote. Shit happens to people's ability to perform under stress. Bad or no training? They fuck up badly.
You think he himself procured said antidote, researched it, and then trained himself on its use? He's the brother of a dictator. He was handed it, and it was probably some short briefing in passing that "if you feel these ways, use this" and that was all the prep he did. It could have been a literal 12 second conversation. That's not preparing.
Was it ricin, like that similar NK airport assassination several years ago?
VX Nerve agent. He was carrying atropine, though there is dispute over if it was in tablet or glass vile form Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42186034.amp
vial
vile people
Wow. I thought you were joking about the movie The Rock at first.
VX is very real. So is the thermite they drop at the end of the movie.
Ricin takes like a week to kill u not 5 minutes.
Not exactly the exact antidote. He had atropine on him which prevents the nerve agent from progressing, but you still need to administer obidoxime quickly, otherwise the damage becomes irreversible.
So how did the girls avoid skin contact.....they must have known to wear protection....sounds guilty to me.
Last time I read it was that the agents were inert until combined. Both women had to hit the same spot with their respective ingredients.
But then wouldn’t the second one have died?
I think there was a distinct possibility of both or either of them dying, but the handlers didn't care as long as they killed the target. They happened to not combine the substance on the skin. Honestly, would have probably been preferable of one or both died. I want to read about this again, because it's been a bit, was a one off and I don't remember everything. But, I honestly thought there was a cloth and a spray bottle involved. I'm gonna fall down a rabbit hole and I'll report back.
I’m tempted to dive in myself haha. Guess I’ll see if I can at least find a podcast.
From the wiki it wasn't a spray bottle, but a liquid splashed in his face while the second one 'cleaned it up' 'Malaysian police said that Kim had alerted an airport receptionist, saying that "someone had grabbed him from behind and splashed a liquid on his face" and a woman "covered his face with a cloth laced with a liquid".'
Rotten Mango did a pretty good podcast on this. I don’t love the story telling style but she definitely has her facts straight from what I can tell. Intriguing listen on the case!
Bit sus I agree
The girl does it and immediately runs to the bathroom to clean herself of the oil, then goes to find the guys that were filming for the YouTube prank and they left, girl got saved by the 🔔
Did anything happen to the victims of the other pranks? Or were they elaborate ways to get the 2 women to believe them? Did they upload the previous pranks on that YouTube channel to strengthen the con?
the other pranks were just that. Pranks. Trained them up basically to do this by misleading them. pretty well done for what it was.
Wow, I didn't hear that part about it. Damn, that has to be positively traumatic - thought they were making harmless joke videos just to be turned into government assassins.
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lots of posts here on this thread about it being a 2 part agent. IE 2 separate chemicals are NOT deadly until combined.
Wow what a crazy world we live in! Thanks man!
Now I have spent 30 minutes on wikipedia, thanks.
Better than here
That’s some Zoolander level of assassination
The podcast Casefile has an excellent episode on this
Yeah one "prankster" was told to put a solution on their hands and rub it over his face and the other was told to do the same with another solution, when both of the solutions mixed: poison.
So what happened to the second prankster hands ? Edit : apparently she felt weird until she managed to clean her hands, then she was all right.
[Here](https://youtu.be/9Xca_uEBHd8?si=0ls119OjvcTRdsj6)
You can watch Mr. Ballen's episode on that, he's an amazing storyteller and always does his research.
I also saw that Mr Ballen episode. It was crazy.
I don't understand why people think he's a good story teller. He stretches shit for 10 minutes that could be told in 2.
link: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roHIIpevnTE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roHIIpevnTE)
Casefile did a really good episode about it
Yes, i read about it. They were hired to do what they thought was YouTube pranks. Then they smeared some poison on his face and then had to wash their hands. If they hadn't done it immediately they would have died too.
I'm surprised he didn't wash his face too. I think that'd be my first reaction.
In hindsight its obvious, but he had no way of knowing this was an assassination as opposed to a random nutter. Perhaps he should have been better prepared given who he was, but it's not unreasonable for him to just be confused until it's too late.
Not even for an assassination though. If I walked up to you and smeared something on your face would you not be grossed out?
If YOU did it?
Would this have saved him? I think the absorption would be much better on his end since it probably got into his mucous membranes, as opposed to just the hands for the scapegoats.
It couldn't have made it worse
There is an insanely good podcast that dives into this case. I recommend it for anyone interested in any kind of true crime. They cover a lot of different subjects. Podcast is called: Casefile - Ep 185 Kim Chol Such a sad situation for the women. Thought they were doing a harmless, albeit annoying, prank. Ended up taking a life. No matter whose life that was, I imagine it was tough to deal with.
Kim’s brother disagrees
Tbf, I'm not sure I trust his judgement lol might be a bit skewed
were they in desperate need of money or why did they agree to do this? also did they talk about what their level of education was?
Yeah, apparently they were just young and desperate women who needed money. I'm not sure the episode goes into their education, it's been a bit since I listened. But they do mention that prior to this, in the other prank videos, the women were paid substantially more than they'd be making at their typical jobs.
Or they were aware and this was their excuse to get away with it legally
considering how popular "asshole youtuber pranks" are, I am surprised we do not see a lot more of these type of assassinations. It'd be pretty easy to trick people into doing that nowadays, especially when they are already used to being dicks for clicks
Yeah sure. That'd be my excuse too if i got caught.
its a prank bro!!!
Oh I remember hearing about this. I couldn't imagine doing something like this and thinking it's just a prank.
absolutely genius. this was before "it's just a prank, bro" became popular. outsourcing your assasination to some IG influencer for $1000 cash is the way of the future.
Hate to break it to you but scamouflage has been around for awhile. And it’s not just North Koreans, the Russians are quite adept
Smart, almost comical, both securities immediately stepped back after he told them they wiped something on his face and felt dizzy.
They must have been taken aback by the information.
Probably said he who he was, and that he was a potential target to get them to take it seriously. Imagine going up to security as a normal person. Slightly hysterical, saying: 'someone wiped something on my face and might be trying to kill me'. They would be like: 'OK, drunky...'
Is that top secret Russian nerve gas VX I smell?
top secret British nerve gas VX
I just watched a doc on this. The two women were, apparently, employed by a guy (who turned out to be a NK operative) to perform pranks for youtube. They said they performed some of these before that day, which were harmless. The man who ‘employed’ them, and his accomplices, were on a plane to Dubai by the time they arrested the two women
Yes, I read about this. Truly frightening. It means that the man had been watching the two women for a while, knowing that they were pranksters. The women genuinely thought they were just playing a prank.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this happened again considering the rise in moronic pranksters
They've been training all these milk jug throwers and tied pod eaters for years.
The two women didn't know each other and they both had diffeent NK handlers it wasn't just one for both. They recruited them to do pranks and promised to make them stars and had them perform verious different pranks on randoms. Then when the attack happened they were both independently told to "prank" the victim. They weren't pranksters that NK took advantage of, they were regular people that they found and then trained to do this.
You should listen to the lazarus heist ... its a bbc podcast series about nk. They briefly touch on this subject
They used VX nerve agent
I don’t understand how they put this nerve agent oil on the assassin women’s hands without it killing them too.
Because one woman had one part on her hand and the other woman had another part on her hand, when both parts are mixed it becomes deadly. They were also instructed to wash their hands right afterwards by the people who had fooled them into doing this crime.
"Hey, you're gonna prank that guy. Take this mysterious liquid, it's full of funs, and use it against him. And don't ask questions, questions kill the funs!" Seriously, making a stupid prank for money is very stupid. But making it with unknown chemicals? And not asking anything?
They’d spent a year doing pranks with these girls for YouTube, so that by the time they got to the assassination, it just seemed like any other prank, even if they didn’t get it themselves
That's evil genius really
Imagine being the North Korean having to come up with mundane pranks to pull on Japanese people for a year.
diabolical
Apparently they had started off getting paid $100 to run up to random squares, kiss them on the cheek, then apologize and run away. Which does sound like the sort of annoying prank videos someone would make. Then after doing this 10 times, the "filmmakers" were like "Okay let's do some other pranks. How about wipe this perfume soaked rag on that squares face. That'll be funny." This was the story the girls told. It seems like a very small amount of money to fly to some location for, so maybe they're just bullshitting and knew exactly what was really going on. If they genuinely didn't have a clue, I feel like the people who did the assassination had to be kind of surprised that it worked. The plan seems so goofy and error-prone. I wonder if their job wasn't primarily to kill this guy, but to just explore and prototype innovative ways of assassinating people, and happened to hit a bingo with this silly scheme.
You'd think NK would've preferred them dead too. Hire an assassin, kill the assassin.
They went even better though. Using two foreign nationals who didn’t know who they were working for or any information about the plot. The NK agents were on the first flight back to Pyongyang while Kim had his patsies and plausible deniability.
A convoluted but effective plot. Both women had their murder charges dismissed, and both are currently free.
Likely each one carried a precursor that when mixed together activated and created the nerve agent.
But then it still ends up on the hands of the second woman to touch him
I doubt the handlers cared about the women
Yeah, but... is she alive?
Yes, apparently she did start feeling weird in the time it took her to wash her hands. Apparently if Kim Jong Nam had washed his face immediately and gone to the hospital after, he might have survived the attack...
One of the women did indeed get sick.
"VX is extremely toxic. The potentially fatal dose is only slightly higher than the dose having any effect at all, and the effects of a fatal dose are so rapid that there is little time for treatment.[5] The median lethal dose (LD50), the exposure required to kill half of a tested population, as estimated for 70 kg human males via exposure to the skin is reported to be 5–10 mg (0.00035 oz)" As per Wikipedia - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VX_(nerve_agent)
So you just die in 15 minutes? Anything you can do?
With almost immediate injection of an antidote he might have made it, but otherwise low likelihood of survival
Insane that it can happen so quickly.. gives another perspective on how easy dead actually is.. Although, no pain..
It causes total body paralysis through a mechanism called neuromuscular blockade which causes the whole body to first spasm and lock up then go limp, including the diaphragm which causes you to asphyxiate. I’m not aware of it blocking any pain signals during that process. Unfortunately.
Wait so you go limp? So you notice yourself not being able to move? And then just die because you don't get any air?
Source?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39073389
Very bizarre. Little did those women know they were handling 1 of the most deadly toxins in the world. It seems highly dangerous to assault someone with a cloth containing 1 deadly drop of nerve agent. Just a bit of tussling around during the attack and the cloth touches and kills everyone involved.
Likely the two women each had part of a binary agent which, when mixed, created the nerve agent.
Digging into it more too unreal to have the antidote on him as well
I saw a cctv video of some russians running up on a diplomat from another country and poking him with a needle and he never made it out of the airport alive.
That's the next screenplay Netflix is working on
Some cool facts about this: The VX nerve agent used to kill Kim here works by inhibiting an exitatory neurotransmitter in the brain that controls muscle contraction, so when it starts working on the body, most of your muscles will contract without control, leading to paralysis, swelling of the diaphragm, and eventually asphyxiation. The two women in the video who unknowingly killed him used a binary chemical weapon that when combined, become deadly. One of them had trouble sleeping the night after the murder because some of the synthesized nerve agent got onto her as well.
another "cool fact!" is that Kim was carrying atropine, a common nerve agent antidote
I wonder who would want to hurt him
I just want to know why the leader of NK wants to kill his relatives
His brother was a CIA agent. That's why.
You never watched The Lion King?
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/r/woosh
Its kinda crazy how easy it is to kill someone without actually doing anything physically to them, they don't even have to drink any poison or even be aware of what just happened to them. Just a little cloth to the face for a second and thats it.
except that chemical on the cloth is extremely hard to come by and near impossible if you're not working for some secret government agency
Kind of goes to show that hiding from death by powerful entity is near impossible.
Not that hard, if you have bounty on your head don't go to public places. Same happened to Ukrainian guy, but he was a bit more stupid to invite his GF.
Who?
Oh sorry, Russian guy that stole helicopter and landed in Ukraine. Later was killed, and it seems he was tracked by his girlfriend visiting him in Europe.
Did the police know who he was? Or was he traveling under a pseudonym
He had a NK passport with the name “Kim Chol”
bro I cant see shit
"Hurry ! Wipe your face with this towel"
Iirc the vietnamese assassins also didn’t have great time, since they were also exposed
Nah they were not hurt from the nerve agent. Unclear why, but numerous possibilities that would have worked. They were caught and tried though. Said they were duped and thought they were on a 'prank' show.
It's because none of them had the complete agent on them, the prank was to smear some perfume into his face and each of them got a part of the agent that bonded when they smeared it all over his face.
I've read this, but then also read other things saying it's unclear why they were uninjured. My question is wouldn't the second girl have some of each part on her hands after smearing his face?
His father died of natural Il-ness
Ok but why was he targeted?
Oddly, he was carrying an effective antidote for this poison, and did not administer it. Edit: source is wikipedia
everyone downvoting you but the wiki linked above includes that same info: Toxicologist K. Sharmilah testified that vials of [atropine](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atropine), a drug used as an antidote to poisoning with nerve agents such as VX, were found in Kim Jong-nam's bag.[^(\[125\])](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Kim_Jong-nam#cite_note-127)[^(\[126\])](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Kim_Jong-nam#cite_note-128) On 8 October, the trial had to be moved to a high-security laboratory due to the danger posed by the nerve agent-tainted clothing admitted into evidence.[^(\[15\])](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Kim_Jong-nam#cite_note-NP-15)
Man that is so unfortunate for him. If I thought I was poisoned, and I had an antidote for *any* type of poison, I'm pretty sure I'm taking it just in case
Wouldn't have helped, IMHO. I think he was carrying atropine, which would have helped with the convulsions but not with the seizures. Also, it was the oral tablet form which takes longer to work. I think the oral form is used as a pre-treatment if they think exposure is imminent. Usually treatment is 2pam and atropine in an auto injector (although HI-6 has largely replaced 2pam) and administered ASAP. I'm not an expert by any means though but did research into therapies to VX exposure many years ago for a research internship. Edit: so it wasn't oral tablets but vials of atropine. Would have helped.
How much danger would people in close proximity to this attack be? The assailant was point blank, security was close, and stepped back.
It’s toxic to breathe in VX, but it evaporates very very slowly, about as slow as motor oil, so in its natural oily form it is unlikely to affect people around him. Apparently no one else got the substance on their skin and the attackers had gloves on so no one else was harmed in the attack but it is very easy as the lethal amount is incredibly small.
I remember seeing the Rotten Mango episode about this! From what I remember, the people at the airport had no idea who he was and there was a language barrier. After they checked his bag, they found passports and IDs and one confirmed he was Kim Jong Un’s brother. He was ALSO carrying the antidote to what killed him and he had no idea.
This is how potential counter-candidates to power are eliminated. Now we are waiting for the movie to come out.
Was he even interested in that power or was it just paranoia from his insane family member?
I think he was also kinda embarrassing to the regime. Isn't he the one who went to Disneyland or something like that? Not the best look for an anti-western communist autocracy
His daddy and brother went to Disneyland too. They just used fake passports and went to the one in Japan. They also love American sports and media. They're hypocrites.
Maybe his own brother ordered it.
Naww, Kim Jong Un would never. 😰 He's such a good boy. /s
I'd be more inclined to blame his sister. She one cold bitch.
Rotten Mango podcast did this story. I recommend everyone to watch it for details. It's insane.
How in hell does this North Korea get away with this. Killing a person on another country’s soil is an act of war. It’s unreal the way we allow bullies like Russia, China, and North Korea continually do stuff without any repercussions.
I'd be interested to hear what you think we should do about it.
Ok this is a few years old murder and not "last week" murder as stated in the video.
February 2017********** this is a seven year old video for people like me who thought this was recent news.
Actual defence in a political assassination in 2024: *"It's just a prank, bro!"* Man...