A high-profile North Korean defector has said that Kim Jong-un most likely ordered the assassination of his half brother, Kim Jong-nam, as a means to cement his status as true royal blood.
 
In an interview with Seoul-based news agency on Saturday, Thae Yong-ho, a former ranking North Korean diplomat in London, spoke about the apparent assassination of Kim Jong-nam, the estranged half brother of the North Korean leader.
 
Thae said former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had three children with his third wife, one of whom was Kim Jong-un. The defector said Kim sent the children to Switzerland in order to conceal their existence.
 
He said that people form a sense of solidarity and of a household as they live together but Kim Jong-un “is like someone who suddenly fell from the sky” as he did not have an attachment or affinity with any family or kin.
 
Thae said that for the young leader, it would have been important to remove his elder half brother Kim Jong-nam in order to imprint the so-called Mount Baekdu bloodline on the North Korean people and the whole world.