Original subtitles

[indistinct chatter]

[interviewer speaking Malay]

[woman speaking Malay]

- Hi.

SITI'S FRIEND:

SITI:

SITI'S FRIEND:

- Thank you. Buh-bye.

SITI'S FRIEND:

MAN [shouting]: Siti!

[diners cheering, clapping]

MAN: Here we go!

One, two, three!

♪ Happy birthday to you... ♪

SITI'S FRIEND:

- ♪ Happy birthday... ♪

SITI'S FRIEND:

♪

ANCHOR 1: We are back with an apparent assassination,

brazenly carried out at an international airport.

ANCHOR 2: Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un,

was murdered in Malaysia...

- ...the sudden and mysterious death of the half-brother

of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

[speaking Korean]

[speaking Chinese]

[speaking Hindi]

ANCHOR 3: Kim Jong-nam was at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport

when he was reportedly poisoned.

ANCHOR 4: ...after he was sprayed in the face with a chemical.

ANCHOR 5: ...by two female assassins...

ANCHOR 6: A cold-blooded execution, straight from a spy movie,

local media reports say.

ANCHOR 7: Two femme fatale killers

poisoning a mysterious political figure with a chemical weapon.

ANCHOR 8: Malaysian police said the poison used

was the deadly VX nerve agent.

ANCHOR 9: ...one of the fastest-acting fatal poisons that exists,

according to scientists.

ANCHOR 10: The U.S. and South Korea believe the murder

was an assassination organized by North Korean agents.

ANCHOR 11: But North Korea denies involvement in the crime.

ANCHOR 12: Tonight, little is known about the two women

who have just been arrested in connection with the murder.

ANCHOR 13: Were the women trained assassins

or innocent pawns of North Korean agents?

♪

[dog barking]

HADI AZMI:

ANCHOR: Well, one thing is clear.

This is one of the most bizarre murder plots in decades.

ANCHOR 2: It really is incredible, when you look at this woman,

who is acting in broad daylight.

ANCHOR 3: Who are these women,

and do they work for the North Korean regime?

REPORTER [in Malay]:

ASRIA NUR HASAN [in Malay]:

[worshippers praying]

[rooster crows]

♪

- I've never actually seen this photo.

Wow.

My obsession with North Korea goes back a long way.

I started covering North Korea in 2004.

And I have not stopped yet.

So, when the assassination happened,

I came out of a yoga class, it was like nine o'clock at night,

and I looked at my phone

and saw it had blown up.

Kim Jong-nam has been assassinated.

REPORTER 1: Kim Jong-nam, at one point, was the favorite son of Kim Jong-il,

the former leader of North Korea.

REPORTER 2: He has been known as a potential rival for Kim Jong-un.

- And it's raising suspicions that Kim Jong-un

may have once again marked one of his own relatives for death.

ANNA FIFIELD: It was so surprising to me, you know, the footage,

to see Kim Jong-nam standing in this airport.

I mean, it's so amazing to think, you know,

I was trying to find Kim Jong-nam for several years before he was killed,

and just to see him walking around, no hat, no sunglasses.

It's really like, wow, I wish I had have been able to talk to him.

And there's this myth that the Kim family

was descended from Mount Paektu,

which is this mountain at the top of North Korea

on the border with China,

that is the mythical home of all Korean people.

And so the Kim regime has used this to say,

"We were divinely ordained to lead North Korea,"

and it's called the Paektu bloodline.

So Kim Il-sung passed down the leadership of North Korea

to his son, Kim Jong-il,

using this whole Paektu bloodline mythology

as the basis for his legitimacy.

So when it came time for Kim Jong-il

to anoint one of his sons,

it should have gone to Kim Jong-nam.

REPORTER [in English]:

[in English]:

ANNA: Kim Jong-nam was the first-born son of Kim Jong-il.

And, in fact, Kim Jong-nam's mother

was a famous actress who Kim Jong-il spotted

and took her basically as his wife.

But Kim Jong-il really doted on Kim Jong-nam.

He was absolutely besotted with this boy

and really seemed to relish his time as a father at the beginning.

♪

Kim Jong-nam and Kim Jong-un grew up entirely separate.

They had different mothers.

And there's a 10-year age difference.

Kim Jong-un's mother was another woman, she was a famous dancer,

and was very ambitious and very present.

She was advocating and agitating

for her son, for him to be the leader of North Korea,

and she had a very powerful influence in the system there.

♪

So, at the beginning of the 2000s,

Kim Jong-nam was caught in this very embarrassing situation.

He had taken his young family to Tokyo

and was busted by the Japanese police.

He'd gone in under a fake Dominican Republic passport,

using a Chinese name, Pang Xiong, which means "fat bear."

And he said, you know, he just wanted to take his kid to Disneyland.

It was extremely embarrassing for the regime.

America is North Korea's number-one enemy

and Disneyland, you know, can you get more American than Disneyland?

But, in fact, there were rumors

that Kim Jong-un's mother actually tipped off the Japanese police

to the arrival of Kim Jong-nam in Japan

because she wanted to make sure

that he could not become the next leader of North Korea.

So, Kim Jong-nam struck a deal with his father

to be allowed to leave North Korea.

He moved to Macau, a Chinese territory,

where he was able to live a kind of normal life.

But he was ruled out of the succession line.

And throughout history, we've seen

brothers being sidelined

in this way.

From Cain and Abel to Romulus and Remus at the foundation of Rome.

Brothers are so threatening

because they can stake a claim to leadership

that nobody else can.

So, when I discovered that Kim Jong-nam had been killed,

I hopped on the first flight that I could get to Kuala Lumpur.

[camera shutters clicking]

INVESTIGATOR [in English]:

HADI:

REPORTER:

HADI:

REPORTER 2:

[telephone rings]

GOOI SOON SENG: Hello.

Yes, speaking.

Yes.

AZURA ALIAS [in English]:

GOOI:

- Okay, all right, then. I will check that. Thank you.

♪

[in English]

[laughing]

Very organized.

DOAN VAN THANH [in Vietnamese]:

NGUYEN THI HA [in Vietnamese]:

DOAN VAN BINH [in Vietnamese]:

[indistinct chatter]

KANG CHOL [in English]:

HADI:

HADI:

[reporters shouting]

[horn honking]

REPORTER 1: After years in exile,

the murdered half-brother of North Korea's dictator

has finally gone home.

REPORTER 2: It's a clean sweep tonight for Kim Jong-un.

North Korea's dangerous young leader has gotten the body

of his murdered half-brother Kim Jong-nam.

And Malaysia has released three North Koreans

wanted for questioning in the murder.

REPORTER 3: Chaos at Beijing's airport Friday

as North Korean Ri Jong Chol made his way through the crowd.

Ri was released and then deported by Malaysian authorities

after being held as a suspect

in the murder of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's estranged half-brother.

[speaking Korean]

REPORTER 4: At the same time, Malaysia got back nine of its citizens,

who had been stuck in North Korea during this diplomatic standoff.

[camera shutters clicking]

The Malaysians insist that the three North Koreans

were not traded for nine hostages.

- We are finished with them, so that's why we allowed them to go.

GOOI:

ANCHOR: The trial begins today

for the two women accused of murdering Kim Jong-nam,

the half-brother of the North Korean premier.

The women claim hey are innocent.

If found guilty, they face Malaysia's mandatory death penalty.

[gavel raps]

HADI:

- It was not a good start for us.

ANNA: Kim Jong-il died in 2011.

And Kim Jong-un was officially unveiled as the successor

when he was 25 years old.

There was a great deal of skepticism when Kim Jong-un was announced.

He had no experience.

He was barely out of college at that stage.

And there was the question

if the old guard in North Korea, if they would tolerate

this young upstart coming in and ordering them around.

So there was a lot of doubt in Seoul, in Tokyo, in Washington,

that Kim Jong-un would be able

to keep this totalitarian regime together.

So, since Kim Jong-un came into power,

he has very kind of strategically acted

to instill loyalty at the top of the regime,

to make sure that the people who support him,

the elites who keep him in power,

have even more reason than ever to keep him there.

So, the millennials of Pyongyang can now do yoga classes

and drink cappuccinos

and they live a much better life

than under his father or his grandfather.

But the other part is fear.

He also needs to keep them terrified.

And the way that he has done this is by getting rid of anybody

who threatens him, who questions him,

who may in some way suggest

that he's not the legitimate leader of North Korea.

And as part of that, a lot of senior figures in the regime

have been purged.

Even his uncle, Jang Song-thaek, was executed.

And this is very much Kim Jong-un's MO for staying in power.

No one is safe.

And it was around that time, you know, Kim Jong-nam

was traveling a lot around southeast Asia,

and he made, you know, several surprising remarks,

where he seemed to question his brother's legitimacy to lead

and whether North Korea should have hereditary succession.

[conversing in Korean]

ANNA: And because of that,

because he was, you know, threatening Kim Jong-un's right to lead North Korea,

Kim Jong-nam was somebody who certainly would be considered a threat

by Kim Jong-un and whose life could be in danger.

[whistle blowing]

HADI:

[gavel pounding]

HADI:

REPORTER: The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons,

which represents 192 nations, issued a statement saying,

"Any use of chemical weapons is deeply disturbing."

[cheering]

While North Korea has not acknowledged it has chemical weapons,

South Korea estimates the regime has a stockpile

of up to 5,000 metric tons.

GOOI:

GOOI:

- Okay.

When Siti was arrested,

we went to visit her in prison.

My first impression of, uh...

her whole demeanor, whole conduct.

She doesn't know anything.

That is when we found out Siti's story.

[Siti speaking Malay]

SELVI SANDRASAGARAM:

SALIM BASHIR [in English]:

HISYAM TEH POH TEIK:

[singing softly]

- Okay.

- Okay.

HISYAM:

MAN: Do you need an interpreter to translate from English to Vietnamese?

[in English]

I have a colleague named Thuy.

HADI:

[audience laughing]

[air horn blows]

[prankster snickering]

[woman screaming]

[techno music playing]

[speaking Vietnamese]

HISYAM:

- [techno music playing] - [man speaking off-screen]

[woman speaking Malay]

BENAH HASAN:

ASRIA [in Malay]:

[Siti speaking Malay]

SELVI: I think for Siti...

life was difficult. She had to survive.

And so in the hope of a better life,

for her and her family,

she came to Kuala Lumpur to look for a better job.

HADI:

B [in Malay]:

SELVI: According to Siti, there was this person

John, this taxi driver,

who introduced her to the North Koreans.

There were, what-- two, three attempts for us to meet John.

But the police, they could not produce him.

They said he was uncontactable.

JOHN [in Malay]:

JOHN:

[console beeping]

[whispering]

[sighs]

GOOI:

SELVI:

♪

- 1-6-8, there.

This is a photo of James.

This is John, the taxi driver who introduced her to James.

And this is Siti, at the very first meeting at Pavilion.

This photo--

Someone who knew John saw him there

and took a photograph and posted it in a group chat.

It is coincidental. Thank God for this photo.

The photograph essentially confirms Siti'’s story.

HADI:

HISYAM:

- Yes. That's right.

SELVI: Siti, there was a prank on the 9th of January.

At Mandarin Oriental.

And she made a video of James.

GOOI:

JAMES:

GOOI:

GOOI:

JAMES:

HISYAM:

Yep.

HISYAM:

SELVI: Siti had three days of pranks,

all at the arrival of the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

And then she posted a video of KLIA.

You know, if I was going to assassinate someone,

surely I would not tell them where I got trained.

ANNA: As young women, they had documented so much of this on social media.

I mean, one of the great things about technology here

is that it did create this trail

which showed the relationships between the women

and their North Korean handlers

that could enable them to put up a defense.

ANNA: Kim Jong-nam had been living in Macau for more than a decade.

And there are a number of rumors

that this was not the first attempt on his life,

that Kim Jong-un had tried repeatedly to assassinate Kim Jong-nam.

In fact, the South Korean intelligence reported

that Kim Jong-nam had actually written a letter to his brother, saying, you know,

"Please stop trying to kill me,"

like, "I am not a threat to you."

You know, "I do not want to be the leader.

"Please let me and my family...

please let us live our lives."

So he was extremely careful and conscious that he was always in danger.

But because he was living in China,

for North Korea to assassinate Kim Jong-nam,

it's very difficult because, you know, North Korea is reliant on China.

They are North Korea's number-one benefactor, patron state.

And from China's point of view,

they had given Kim Jong-nam kind of exile protection,

and in some ways were maybe keeping him in reserve,

that if they wanted to replace Kim Jong-un,

they could install Kim Jong-nam as the leader of North Korea.

So there's no way that North Korea could ever

conduct such an audacious assassination,

or any assassination, on Chinese soil.

So they had to make sure they caught Kim Jong-nam

when he was outside of China.

HADI:

- So, here we have Kim Jong-nam

in the elevator at the Westin Hotel in Langkawi,

with this man, who was later reported to be a CIA agent.

It's never been confirmed that this man was, in fact,

working for the CIA.

But during the course of my reporting, I discovered that Kim Jong-nam

had become a CIA informant after his brother took power.

HADI:

- The CIA likes to say that North Korea is the blackest of all the black holes.

They have so little information about what's happening inside North Korea.

And Kim Jong-nam, the one thing that he had

that very few other people had

was information about the inner workings of this regime.

And if North Korea had discovered that Kim Jong-nam

was providing information to the American intelligence service,

this alone would be reason for the North Koreans

to try to eliminate him.

HISYAM:

♪

GOOI:

[woman speaking Japanese]

[man speaking Japanese]

GOOI:

HADI:

HADI:

HADI:

HADI:

GOOI:

HADI:

I saw the new actress

put hands on his face from the back.

HADI:

- This video is important because you can see Siti

rubbing the palm of her hand.

If she had known it was VX, you know, the most lethal poison,

she would surely not have rubbed the palm of her hands.

GOOI:

HADI:

GOOI:

WAN SHAHARUDDIN WAN LADIN:

REPORTER:

HADI:

ANNA: Just from a judicial point of view, yes, these women were caught on camera

carrying out this act.

They were very clearly the ones who had assassinated, technically,

Kim Jong-nam.

So Malaysia did need to act, did need to hold somebody to account,

and the fact is that the masterminds of it were back in North Korea.

[chanting]

So now the assassination of Kim Jong-nam

has been really fundamental to phase one

of Kim Jong-un's leadership

and to the way that he has been able to stay in power.

And once he had taken out all his rivals,

he had proven his strength domestically...

He was ready for phase two.

- North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States.

They will be met with fire and fury

like the world has never seen.

ANNA: He wanted to get the world's attention.

I think now that he has proven he had a credible nuclear weapons program,

he is now starting this process

of trying to look like a respectable international statesman

and seems very strong and very confident

and very much in control of this regime.

[birds singing]

[musical ringtone playing]

- Hello.

Okay, good. Who is this, please?

Ah, okay, all right, all right, fine.

WOMAN [in English]:

HISYAM:

SALIM:

[error tone playing]

[car radio playing softly]

GOOI:

SELVI:

HADI:

..."they are fucked."

REPORTER 1 [in English]:

REPORTER 1:

REPORTER 2 [in English]:

SELVI: At this point of time,

Siti and Doan have been in jail almost two years.

I think the girls, um, really have no one apart from each other.

Because they are kept separately from all other inmates.

Even then they are separated from one another.

HISYAM:

[indistinct chatter]

[camera shutters clicking]

HADI:

SELVI: Azura.

Azura.

HADI:

[gavel rapping]

HADI:

REPORTER:

REPORTER:

REPORTER:

♪

[indistinct chatter]

[whistle blowing]

[reporters clamoring]

[excited chatter]

REPORTER 1:

REPORTER 2:

HADI:

HADI:

[gavel raps]

HISYAM:

AZURA:

SELVI:

- Come, come. - Azura, come.

- One for my team.

GOOI:

HADI:

REPORTER [in Malay]:

HADI:

- Vietnam and North Korea continue to have very close relations.

They're both communist countries.

And there's a lot of North Korean activity inside Vietnam.

So I think Vietnam's incentive to speak out

and to risk angering North Korea for the sake of this one woman,

I think, was very different from the situation that Indonesia faced,

whereas Indonesia doesn't have those same strong relations with North Korea.

HADI:

BYSTANDER: Bye! SITI: Bye!

HADI:

[speaking Malay]

ASRIA:

[quiet chatter]

SITI:

[thunder rumbling]

HISYAM:

[whistle blows]

HADI:

♪

♪

REPORTER 1 [in English]:

REPORTER 1:

[indistinct dialogue]

REPORTER 2: Doan!

[camera shutter clicking]

[speaking Vietnamese]

INTERPRETER: The family is very, very lucky today and very happy.

Thank you very much.

HADI:

REPORTER:

♪

SALIM: One minute, one minute. Take their photo.

One, two...

Okay. Nice. Very good. Thank you. - [man laughs]

- [reporters shouting] MAN: Take off the specs.

REPORTER 1 [in Vietnamese]:

[in Vietnamese]

REPORTER 2:

DOAN:

Thank you.

Thank you, see you later.

Thank you, I'm very happy now. Thank you so much.

Yeah. Yes.

HADI:

SITI:

[rooster crows]

[phone dialing]

DOAN [in English]:

SITI [in English]:

DOAN:

DOAN:

DOAN:

HADI:

ANNA: For all the international condemnation and shock

that followed this assassination,

you know, North Korea has got away relatively scot-free from this.

In many ways, this is the perfect crime.

The fact that Kim Jong-un was prepared to purge and execute his brother,

in this most spectacular fashion,

sent a message to the world that his brutality knows no limits,

that nobody is safe.

The North Koreans never suffered any punishment for this.

North Korea still has an embassy in Malaysia.

You know, the relations between them have not really suffered

as a result of this.

And Kim Jong-un,

he has been able to come to the outside world.

And he gets his red carpet welcome on the dais with the flags.

He gets the photo opportunity to show himself

as an international statesman.

And now, all of a sudden, he gets to present himself

as a peer of the most powerful man in the world.

DONALD TRUMP: I just received a beautiful letter from Kim Jong-un.

I can't show you the letter, obviously, but it was a very personal,

very warm, very nice letter.

I saw the information about the CIA with respect to his half-brother.

And I would tell him that would not happen under my... under my auspices.

ANNA: So this is the way that Kim Jong-un has defied all the skepticism

and shown that he is, you know, surprisingly adept

at being a totalitarian leader.

And I think these two women were very unwitting pawns

in this bigger chess game.

DOAN:

SITI [in Malay]:

[speaking Malay]

♪