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| A police line was struck in front of the North Korean embassy in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia during the assassination of Kim Jong-nam in 2017. © AFP=News1 |
The conflict between North Korea and Malaysia in the’Assassination of Kim Jong-nam’ could not be resolved and ended diplomatic relations. There is also a possibility that North Korea’s position in Southeast Asia will shrink in the future.
The North Korean Foreign Ministry declared a breakup with Malaysia in a statement on the 19th. This is due to Malaysia’s repatriation of North Korean businessman Chul-myeong Moon to the United States for violating sanctions against North Korea.
Moon is accused of managing and distributing money to the North Korean authorities through’money laundering’, sending luxury goods that violate sanctions against North Korea. The US request for the repatriation of Mr. Moon appears to have been due to the capture of the situation in which financial institutions or companies in the US were involved in the process.
A Malaysian court admitted the charges and decided to surrender Moon to the United States, but North Korea refuted in a statement that Moon’s activities were “legitimate foreign trade activities.”
Malaysia and North Korea were originally diplomatic and friendly countries. The two countries, which established diplomatic relations in 1973, have maintained friendly relations ever since. North Korean citizens could enter Malaysia without a visa.
Malaysia was also the stage for negotiations when an agreement to supply light water reactors to North Korea was signed in 1995. North America also held missile talks in the capital Kuala Lumpur in 2000.
This was because the two sides shared a line of’non-aligned diplomacy’ against the great powers.
For this reason, Malaysia has also become the main base in the Southeast from the perspective of the North Korean authorities. At one time, the number of North Korean Embassy in Laicia on the weekend was so active that it was close to thirty, which is said to be due to the fact that many people engaged in trade activities, such as Moon, who was repatriated this time, were included.
It was also found that agents in charge of North Korean intelligence activities also used Malaysia as their main base.
Then, when Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of the Labor Party’s general secretary, was assassinated by a VX nerve agent at a Malaysian airport, the relationship between the two sides was greatly distorted.
The assassination of Kim Jong-nam was carried out by a woman of Vietnamese and Indonesian nationality, but the results of the investigation were announced that there were North Korean agents behind it. At that time, Malaysia rejected and delayed the delivery of Kim Jong-nam’s body as a sign of protest against North Korea, and North Korea detained the Malaysian citizens who had stayed in North Korea. Diplomatic measures were also taken to expel each other’s ambassadors.
Eventually, Kim Jong-nam’s body was handed over to North Korea as a condition of repatriating Malaysians detained in North Korea, and officially declared the normalization of relations, but the relationship stiffened after delaying the dispatch of ambassadors. The ambassadors of the two countries remained vacant until the day North Korea declared a break-up.
North Korea and Malaysia also sought’reconciliation’ after the 18th Non-alignment Movement (NAM) meeting held in Baku, Azerbaijan in 2019. However, no progress has been made since then.
Meanwhile, North Korea’s activities in Malaysia also contracted.
North Korea seems to have accumulated complaints about its “closeness” with the United States and Malaysia. At the time of the assassination of Kim Jong-nam, the U.S. intelligence activities were actively conducted in Malaysia, and there are rumors that the Malaysian authorities were also cooperative.
It should also be noted that this repatriation case is a difficult issue without active US intervention. As Malaysia’s judicial treatment of Mr. Moon began with the’request’ of the United States, it is said that the repatriation was possible because the United States actively provided the details of Mr. Moon’s activities acquired by his country to Malaysia and provided diplomatic’benefits’. Comes out.
If this’theory’ is true, it is possible that North Korea’s position in Southeast Asia will further shrink in the future. This is because it has been confirmed that the United States can exert active influence.
In a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that day, North Korea accused it of being “a direct product of a conspiracy against the Republic of Korea created by the US’s vicious hostilities to isolate and suppress our Republic and the pro-American humiliation of Malaysian authorities.”
At the same time, key figures of Malaysia’s judicial authorities claimed that they received “alcohol entertainment and rewards” from the U.S. ambassador, and that this resulted in negotiations in which U.S. weapons were provided to Malaysia free of charge. It criticized the close contact between the United States and Malaysia.
Therefore, it is expected that North Korea will actively use this issue as a justification for offensive against the United States in the future. This is in the same context as the statement warned that “the US, the pilot behind this incident and the main culprit, will also pay a reasonable price.”