Kim Jong-Nam Was Killed by VX Nerve Agent, Malaysians Say

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/world/asia/kim-jong-nam-vx-nerve-agent-.html

by matt4077 • 9 years ago

329 149 9 years ago

gwern2• 9 years ago

Does VX explain how the two women survived despite using bare hands to administer an apparently skin-absorbable poison? It has binary agent formulations, so each women could have one half on her hand and avoid any contamination by swiping very fast.

sparky_z• 9 years ago

Do we know they were bare-handed?

philip1209• 9 years ago

Seems to have been a spray bottle of some kind?

Family members and Indonesian officials have said they believe she was tricked into thinking that the attack on Mr. Kim was part of a comedy video, involving spraying liquid on unwitting victims in public. The Malaysian authorities have said that both women were aware that the liquid was toxic.

crdb• 9 years ago

While addressing a spellbound audience of young officers, he would sometimes partially immerse one finger in a small beaker of pure VX for a few seconds. Without interrupting his lecture, he would then amble to a nearby sink and casually wash the deadly chemical from his finger. The teaching point was that VX could not enter the skin instantaneously, and that accidental exposure of a small area would not be harmful as long as the site were promptly and thoroughly decontaminated.

https://www.amazon.com/Chemical-Warfare-Secrets-Almost-Forgo... - Chemical Warfare Secrets Almost Forgotten: A Personal Story of Medical Testing of Army Volunteers, by James S. Ketchum MD

jszymborski• 9 years ago

I'm grateful for the edification, but dude, that's a very specific reference from a >$100 (text?)book on a very particular subject. I'm afraid to ask about your background :P

mdnormy• 9 years ago

The timeline seems to agree.

Jong Nam felt uneasy after being sprayed and went to KLIA clinic. As his condition worsen, he's transferred to Putrajaya hospital which is 30min away from KLIA. He was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital. I would say 30min to 1 hour for the nerve agent to actually kill someone.

Sorry I don't have source. Just watched the news few days ago on Malaysian TV.

GigabyteCoin• 9 years ago

So all Kim Jong-Nam had to do to survive was walk into a washroom and wipe his face clean with soap and water?

eck• 9 years ago

It could have been an accident that they survived. In this case the assassins dying along with the victim is a feature, not a bug.

raverbashing• 9 years ago

If the case is that the "assassins" were bystanders that were convinced to participate into it, it is highly probable they were expendable

rudolf0• 9 years ago

True, but I feel like if they wanted to ensure their death, they could've just wiped them with the same rag after Kim was confirmed to be exposed. It seems they just let them go, so I guess they didn't care either one way or the other about their survival?

tlow8• 9 years ago

Please see my comment with regard to respiratory versus dermal administration. Further almost all research with regards to these agents has been military and thus is not widely shared or known. Even further, the Soviets spent more than 30 years developing 3rd generation nerve agents that would be undetectable by NATO.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novichok_agent

saycheese• 9 years ago

They likely took the antidotes that are available for VX right before, chemical-resistant gloves, applied the VX in non-binary form, then washed their hands in bleach and washed it off with water.

tlow8• 9 years ago

No. This is wrong. The far better approach would be "Pharmacologic prophylaxis against nerve agent poisoning." [1] A prophylaxis agent is NOT an antidote.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15792266

coconut_crab• 9 years ago

I read somewhere that they wore gloves before applying the poison.

Wikipedia has something interesting about VX:

VX can also be delivered in binary chemical weapons which mix in-flight to form the agent prior to release. Binary VX is referred to as VX2,[6] and is created by mixing O-(2-diisopropylaminoethyl) O′-ethyl methylphosphonite (Agent QL) with elemental sulfur (Agent NE) as is done in the Bigeye aerial chemical bomb.

So maybe two of them were holding different component and they only reacted after being sprayed on Kim's face. If this is true then this is a very intricate assassination plan.

gwern2• 9 years ago

Yes, that's what I meant.

asdz• 9 years ago

I'm wondering, the first one would be safe for sure, but how would the second one that apply it be safe? The chemical would have react by the time she apply it right? And since she (either the Indonesian / Vietnamese) got the reacted chemical, wouldn't she die too?

molmalo• 9 years ago

Exactly what I was wondering after reading the article... Something seems to be wrong or incomplete.

oska• 9 years ago

Apply the first one directly to the skin. Apply the second as a spray.

goodcanadian• 9 years ago

The BBC article (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39073389) mentions that one of the two women who interacted with Kim also became ill, and also that the woman who "accosted" him immediately went to wash her hands. It is not clear to me if this is the same woman or the other one.

abe_duarte• 9 years ago

I bet they administered themselves atropine soon after.

But your theory is really cool, each of them had half of the nerve gas, the second's hand would have been contaminated. This thing will go through your skin.

epmaybe• 9 years ago

probably not atropine, a more reversible drug like physostigmine might be better.

mtw2• 9 years ago

The women were expendable and I don't think they knew it was VX, or what VX was. It's most likely they trained with another substance, and were not even told who, where and when the final act would be done.

anigbrowl3• 9 years ago

I disapprove of assassination but I've got to admit this one scores 10/10 for sheer style.

matt4077• 9 years ago

Certainly the attempt to kill Castro, of all people, with an exploding cigar should rank higher. Just imagine how that CIA brain storming went:

A: "We're tasked with killing Castro. Again. Any ideas? Anything? Nothing is stupid! Castro! Go!

B: "Cigars"

C: "Boom!"

A: "I see we're in mind-melt here. No wonder the western world trusts us with their lives during these troubling times"

If you insist on actually successful assassinations, and score it on cruelty as well, using Polonium should win. The victim doesn't only die a miserable death. It takes two weeks during which they can still give interviews, know they're going to die, and even knows exactly who did it.

amyjess• 9 years ago

And for sheer elegance, I'll give it to the assassination of Georgi Markov by being poked with a ricin-tipped umbrella.

MichaelMoser123• 9 years ago

I think it's a myth. He didn't need to import any cigars to Cuba and if they could get as close as slipping cigars into his supply they could have killed him anyway.

groby_b3• 9 years ago

Given that they tried pretty much anything...

There were 600+ attempts on Castro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/638_Ways_to_Kill_Castro

Granted, that's a figure from Cuban counterintelligence, so maybe slightly too high ;) But most of them are documented. And not only 'weird' ideas like exploding cigars - the last one, in 2000, involved 90kg of explosives: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-38121583

doubleplusgood• 9 years ago

Israel assassinated The Engineer via exploding cellphone.

gozur88• 9 years ago

What is it with these tinpot strongmen? Polonium, mortars, nerve gas... in my day when you wanted someone dead you just shot him.

wbl• 9 years ago

Do you know about Georgi Markov? Bulgaria concerned about the propaganda fallout if they killed him and it was known, so they injected him with ricin instead.

Mossad attempted to use poison to assassinate the head of Hezbollah. It went comically wrong, with his driver chasing down the assassins with a rolled-up newspaper.

patmcguire2• 9 years ago

It's easy to check for guns at customs.

anigbrowl3• 9 years ago

I think such incidents are more messages about the ability to stage an elaborate and unexpected attack than about the death of the unlucky victim, who may not even be that important in the scheme of things but is chosen to call attention to the political nature of the act.

tlow8• 9 years ago

If we are talking about V-Series Agents, we might as well talk about the secret Soviet Program to develop additional V-series compounds[1] that would be undetectable by the west. It is important to note that there are many vectors of entry for a V-series agent, and in this case, evidence points to an atomized version, as opposed to the dermal administration which is more common among this class. An atomized version targeting the respiratory system and not the dermal would explain why two women attempting to aid "with bare hands" would not have been harmed.

Beyond VX, there exist a plethora of other analogous chemicals, namely the G-Series[2], VE[3], VG[4], VM[5], VR[6] and VP[7]. A notable commonality among these compounds is that very little is known about their effects outside of military research (ie not shared).

Given the military nature of these compounds, there is a reason to believe that this was a military assassination.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novichok_agent

[2] Sarin is a G-series agent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VE_(nerve_agent)

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VG_(nerve_agent)

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VM_(nerve_agent)

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VR_(nerve_agent)

[7] https://books.google.com/books?id=DQw2hVGe0aMC&lpg=PA72&ots=...

_wp3r2• 9 years ago

It is worth mentioning that a powder form of nerve agents was also created during the time that these things were the fad. Mirzayanov covered the functionality of these binary powder based chems with 5-7x efficacy over VX. It would be highly unlikely for NK have functional quantities of these though.

Edit: Also it would be possible to use a non-military Acetylcholinesterase inhibitor for this attack.

tlow8• 9 years ago

In reply to "Edit": Oh? Really? And might you have a compound in mind?

Seriously. Do you have inside information on a novel Nerve Agent that has not been studied for military use but is effective?

rwmj• 9 years ago

There's an absolutely terrifying book by Ken Alibeck ("Biohazard") about the Soviet secret chemical and biological warfare programme. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Alibek)

Tech1• 9 years ago

Prior US Army bomb technician checking in.

Also look at State Secrets: An Insider's Chronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program by Vil S Mirzayanov, Novichok is covered there as well. ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1432725661/ref=oh_aui_sear... nonref)

dmix• 9 years ago

not the dermal would explain why two women attempting to aid "with bare hands" would not have been harmed.

Can you explain exactly how they carried out the assassination without harming themselves?

Each had two different compounds on their hands (or one with a rag?) and they touched his face in sequence. Then only on his face did they combine to become the nerve agent?

What about the last girl who touched his face, how was she not harmed? Was it because he had to inhale it?

mulletbum• 9 years ago

She was harmed.

nabla9• 9 years ago

At least one of the people involved claims that she did not know it was an assassination. After this VX revelation it makes even more sense for actual assassins use this tactics.

Suspect in North Korea killing 'thought she was taking part in TV prank' Indonesian Siti Aisyah, 25, duped and ‘not aware it was assassination attempt by alleged foreign agents’, says head of police
Indonesia’s national police chief, Tito Karnavian, told reporters in Indonesia’s Aceh province that the Indonesian woman, 25-year-old Siti Aisyah, was paid to be involved in pranks. He said she and another woman performed stunts which involved convincing men to close their eyes and then spraying them with water. “Such an action was done three or four times and they were given a few dollars for it, and with the last target, Kim Jong-nam, allegedly there were dangerous materials in the sprayer,” Karnavian said.
“She was not aware that it was an assassination attempt by alleged foreign agents.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/17/suspect-north-...

zmh• 9 years ago

one was reported vomiting.

sasas3• 9 years ago

Interesting tid-bit from Wikipedia [1]

In fiscal year 2008, the US Department of Defense released a study finding that the U.S. had dumped at least 124 tons of VX into the Atlantic Ocean off the coasts of New York/New Jersey and Florida, between 1969 and 1970. This material consisted of nearly 22,000 M55 rockets, 19 bulk containers holding 1,400 pounds (640 kg) each, and one M23 chemical landmine. [25]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VX_(nerve_agent)#US_VX_stockpi...

tlow8• 9 years ago

Yep. And who knows what the affects of that were. But I do not agree with the claim that this is interesting in this context as it seems irrelevant to the discussion.

jdoliner• 9 years ago

The article seems to suggest that became common practice in 1990, before when the parent is talking about. I'm not sure how you can claim it's inaccurate and that the parent should RTFA, it's a verbatim quote from the article isn't it?

sasas3• 9 years ago

But I do not agree with the claim that this is interesting in this context as it seems irrelevant to the discussion

The discussion appears to be on the topic if we assume the topic is VX or nerve agents in general. I assume this is in line with your intention for posting a series of Wikipedia links on the subject in this thread, which I found both relevant and interesting.

The reasons why I suggested that the dumping of large quantities of nerve agents was an interesting fact is an inquisitive person may ask themselves -

- Is the product still down there under the ocean?

- What could be the environmental impact?

- What were they thinking at the time to dump such a hazardous material? Why didn't they use alternative means to destroy the material?

- Was this standard practise back then? If so what other deadly man made products are under the ocean?

- If they are still working to eradicate 5,950 tons of nerve agents in a single storage complex in Russia, how much did that country dump back during the cold war and would we actually ever find out? TFA says the 5,950 tons is only 14% of of Russian chemical weapons [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VX_(nerve_agent)#Worldwide_VX_...

amelius2• 9 years ago

it seems irrelevant to the discussion

Unless the victim ate the wrong fish.

wiz21c2• 9 years ago

so if I read wikipedia well, 10 milligrams are enough to kill a person, so we have 124 Tons = 124 000 000 000 / 10 = 12 400 000 000 deadly doses in the ocean. Interesting. I wonder what the half-life of this VX thing is :-)

DrJones1098• 9 years ago

The ocean may have diluted it a bit.

sndean• 9 years ago

I wonder if they used this binary combination: O-Ethyl O-2-diisopropylaminoethyl methylphosphonite and sulfur [0][1]. Not sure if that would be consistent with one being in a spray bottle.

[0] http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/831901-overview

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QL_(chemical)

tlow8• 9 years ago

It will likely never be known what compound, but the "spray bottle" tells us that the agent was targeting respiratory system, not dermal. However the use of V-Series agent is a strong indicator of military assassination as almost all research on these chemicals is confined to secret military research. The Russians have admitted to the synthesis of more than 100 more novel V-series nerve agents.[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novichok_agent

While I'm not convinced a binary compound was needed in this case, it is an interesting theory!

aladoc992• 9 years ago

"the "spray bottle" tells us that the agent was targeting respiratory system, not dermal. "

I'm not sure this follows. If the cloth was impregnated with one of the binary components and the other was sprayed on the cloth, then VX would be synthesized right there in contact with the skin. I don't know that you could be sure a lethal dose would be inhaled in one or two seconds.

jbenz• 9 years ago

The Rock came out when I was 13 so needless to say, I'm a big fan.

I absolutely thought VX Nerve Agent was fictional until today.

M_Grey8• 9 years ago

To be fair, the form as it existed in that movie sort of was... although not by much.

hkmurakami• 9 years ago

I'm in exactly the same boat as you and thought VX was fictional until about 10 years later when a mainstream media article made a reference to it.

flukus2• 9 years ago

Not VX, but don't you remember this as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack

mattnumbe• 9 years ago

I actually ended up in the same article because VX is related to オウム真理教(Aum Shinrikyo), the group that was responsible for the gas attacks in Tokyo. They were also manufacturing VX and are the only ones on record to have used it to commit a murder, until now I guess... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aum_Shinrikyo

L_2262• 9 years ago

I had thought it was going to be a fentanyl or carfentanyl aerosol spray, I suppose that might have rendered him incoherent sooner though. The use of VX seems like bragging really (as if the act wasn't already adolescent enough).

M_Grey8• 9 years ago

Oh yeah... like using Polonium to kill Litvinenko... this is all about sending a message.

L_2262• 9 years ago

Indeed, and the message was "I'm insecure about my position".

winfred• 9 years ago

Or obscuring the source. If I wanted to cause a Chinese-North Korea conflict, I'd do it in a way that gives me enough time to tie up loose ends and points in a certain direction.

Same with Litvinenko. We will never find out the true story. Was it a message? Probably. But from who to who? Might have been FSB, but there were plenty of other parties that really didn't like Litvinenko and could have used Russian Polonium either to blame the FSB or to tell the FSB not to fuck with them, because they had the means to blame them for random hits (or a million other possible reasons).

digler999• 9 years ago

I doubt fentanyl would work in a public place. Wouldn't he just pass out from respiratory failure until paramedics (who are probably onsite at the airport) ventilated him ?

ransom15382• 9 years ago

WHY?

Why kill people exotically? Why not just use a simple garrote with a thin wire? 10 seconds done, the head would be practically off. I am sure you could get a weird pair of head phones past security. If you poison someone with polonium/exotic nerve agent doesn't it narrow down the suspect pool?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvine...

M_Grey8• 9 years ago

Why do you go so far out of your way to kill someone publically, notoriously, in the first place? Simply having them die is something a state could reasonably accomplish without the publicity, or at least attempt to avoid publicity. When you use a means of assassination which could only have been provided by a state actor... you're sending a message.

Nobody ever has to admit that Russia was involved with Litvinenko... the DPRK never has to admit their role with Jon-Nam... the means used speaks for them.

That is the point

It's thug 101.

NamTaf2• 9 years ago

Because slicing someone's head off requires you to be there, next to them, as it happens. You're standing next to the body as it gargles and bleeds everywhere and security will descend on you in a big way.

Wiping someone's face then bailing is something that the target will shrug off as 'some crazy' until some time later it kills them. This buys you time to get out of the place before anyone realises the full extent of what happened. Hence why they're back in Pyongyang, out of the reach of any law enforcement.

Pyongyang doesn't really care if the world knows it's them or not. I bet they care much more if they lose their highly trained assassins, though.

M_Grey8• 9 years ago

Why do something that's so obvious though? Bump into someone instead and you can accomplish the same thing without a big stunt.

ransom15382• 9 years ago

Oh I always imagine North Korea had the assassins family chained up. WTF does it matter if they get back?

rdtsc• 9 years ago

I would even say it cares that other dissidents notice and understand exactly who did it. Had this been a robbery or some car accident it would not have been as effective. The message is "we are coming after you"

_cubi• 9 years ago

It's far easier to touch someone in public than it is to garotte someone in public and North Korea seemed to think it had some kind of diplomatic right to the body before an autopsy, which would also lead them to believe that their exotic toxin wouldn't be discovered.

tyingq• 9 years ago

I think showing that it was likely nation state sponsored was the point. Either by North Korea to scream "we can", or some other nation to stir the pot.

InclinedPlane• 9 years ago

VX can be administered by untrained "assassins", or perhaps ignorant dupes, be easily smuggled across borders and have a very high likelihood of success. The DPRK tried to hide the evidence of the poison by attempting to prohibit medical access to the corpse, but it didn't work. Maybe they thought they could get away with it. Maybe they thought it was worth the risk of being exposed. Maybe they wanted to send a message. Who knows?

Element_• 9 years ago

Some other famous chemical assassination attempts: http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/a-look-at-assassination-attempts...

kchoudhu2• 9 years ago

Is the chemistry of VX well enough known that countries without access to it can recognize it when they see it?

sgift• 9 years ago

It is. See the various Wikipedia links given here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13720517 - it also contains the chemical structure. That's actually one of the things which makes chemical weapons far more dangerous than nuclear weapons - it is comparatively easy to produce them without much specialized equipment.

kchoudhu2• 9 years ago

Well, that's terrifying.

seesomesense• 9 years ago

As a side note, in some poor, largely rural countries, acetylcholinesterase inhibitors in insecticides are the most popular suicide agents.

aedron• 9 years ago

Does this remind anyone else of The Interview?

amelius2• 9 years ago

How did they find the agent? Do they have a list of thousands of agents to test against, and do they work down the list one by one? How does this work?

aladoc992• 9 years ago

My guess is gas chromatography mass spectrometry, which yields a characteristic signature for many compounds.

gerjomarty• 9 years ago

It's not available right now, but I recommend a BBC doc "Inside Porton Down: Britain's Secret Weapons Research Facility"[0], in which they showed nerve agents like this being created.

[0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07hx40t

andlier• 9 years ago

There is a fascinating BBC-documentary about chemical warfare history and the british Porton Down military research facility, hosted by Michael Mosley [0]. There is a part where the researcher actually makes sarin and VX right in front of Michael in a fume-hood. They literally watch the VX-liquid condense out of the vacuum distillation apparatus right in front of Mosley and the camera team. [0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07hx40t

Edit: Program available here until mid March: https://tv.nrk.no/program/KOID23002916/mosley-og-de-kjemiske... If you can VPN to Norway.

teh_klev• 9 years ago

I saw that recently and can certainly recommend viewing it.

benages• 9 years ago

You can also download the program with youtube-dl without a VPN.

pritambaral• 9 years ago

Checked out how youtube-dl does it. Remarkably, nrk.no is satisfied with a faked X-Forwarded-For header.

mtw2• 9 years ago

Doesn't North Korea has ICBM missiles capable of reaching Italy or Washington DC?

A missile full of VX agent is scary to me. The most North KOrea can fit on a missile is a warhead as powerful as Hiroshima's but a missile full of VX could potentially kill everyone in Washington DC

Plus think of all the implications of transporting VX through international borders. Did China accept having North Korean agents transporting VX in China? Did they smuggle it through fish boats?

coldcode• 9 years ago

Not yet. Also given the unreliability of their missiles I doubt they could hit the ocean with any reasonable chance.

overcast• 9 years ago

North Korea launching a weapon of mass destruction on anyone on this planet, would ensure North Korea ceases to exist. They are just nonsense posturing, and empty threats. In the end we say yes, yes, grand wizard of NK, you are the best. Then we give them some money, and wait for their next silly display.

baybal2• 9 years ago

North Korea launching a weapon of mass destruction on anyone on this planet

This will mean that China has ordered them to do that. It will not happen in any other way.

arprocter2• 9 years ago

Doesn't North Korea has ICBM missiles capable of reaching Italy or Washington DC?

No[0]. The missile Iran recently tested was thought to be a Musudan[1]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_mas...

[1]https://warisboring.com/was-irans-new-missile-born-in-north-...

smacktoward• 9 years ago

Doesn't North Korea has ICBM missiles capable of reaching Italy or Washington DC?

Not quite. The longest-range operational missiles they have are intermediate-range only, capable at best of reaching targets in Guam and Siberia. They've test-launched a few longer-ranged missiles as technology demonstrators, but even the best of these (the Taepodong-2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taepodong-2) only had enough range to reach India or Alaska.

throwaway_dbch• 9 years ago

so quick to assume this was done by nk.

Kim Jong-Nam Was Killed by VX Nerve Agent, Malaysians Say

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