February 23, 2022 • 38 mins
When a man is mysteriously murdered at an airport, investigators discover a fake passport, $120,000 in cash, and traces of the world's most deadly chemical weapon. Who was this victim? And why was North Korea so hellbent on killing him? The answers spark a diplomatic crisis of international proportions—and lead police to a pair of unwitting pranksters.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
It's February two thousand seventeen, the day before Valentine's Day.
Kim Tal is standing inside Kuala Lympur International Airport, staring
up at the departures board. It's busy. Throngs of passengers
glide through the airport's spacious hall, making their way from
(00:30):
check in to security. This is Malaysia's biggest and busiest
international airport. On a usual day, nearly a hundred and
sixty thousand passengers travel through here. At nine in the morning,
Kim blends into the crowd. He's bald and pudgy, wearing
light blue jeans and a gray blazer, a black backpack
(00:53):
slung casually around his right shoulder. Kim gazes up at
the list of departures and sees that his flight to Macau,
his home in the south of China, is on schedule.
He begins walking toward the ticketing area. Little does he know,
but he is being watched. Kim approaches an air Asia kiosk.
(01:19):
As he enters his flight information, he doesn't notice two
young women, both thin with dark hair, slowly creeping up
behind him. Suddenly, a pair of hands clasp around Kim's
face from behind. Is as if someone is trying to
surprise him, like a game of Guess who, But instead
(01:41):
the woman wipes her hands across his cheeks, pressing her
palms firmly against his eyes, his nose, his mouth. Kim
jerks his head away just as the first woman releases
her grip. The second woman, wearing a T shirt that
says L O L, does the same. She smears her
(02:01):
hands all over his face. Kim thrashes his head to
break free. The woman yells sorry and scurries away, and
then as quickly as they appeared, they're gone. The women
vanish into the crowd. Kim chal takes a deep breath
(02:23):
and tries to collect himself. He checks his belongings. The
woman didn't take his bag or I D or not
anything from his pockets. All they did was smear a
greasy substance over his eyes and nose. It feels like
motor oil, and then it starts to burn. Kim staggers
(02:46):
the closest information desk, his nose starts to run. The
pain on his skin intensifies. He explains to an employe
that he's been assaulted, that two strangers came up behind
him and rubbed oil or grease or something all over
his face. He tries to wipe the grease off, but
(03:09):
the steam is so intense he can hardly keep his
eyes open. Very painful, he explains, taking deeper and deeper breaths,
Very painful. The attendant walks Kim to three officials through
labored breaths. He explains the story again, be attacked, the grease,
(03:32):
the pain. The officials nod and lead him down a
long hallway to the airport clinic. Kim begins to limp,
and his vision blurs. He groans in pain as his chest,
his lungs, his heart tightened like a clamp. Inside the clinic,
doctors measure his vitals. The burning becomes relentless. His breathing
(03:58):
is wapid and shallow. Somebody snaps a picture of Kim
chal He slumped in a chair, his jacket cast off,
his pot belly peeking out of his royal blue tshirt.
His eyes are half open, but he's unconscious. At this point,
he's barely breathing. Seconds later, medics laid him flat on
(04:20):
an orange stretcher and strap an oxygen mask over his
nose and mouth, squeezing it again and again, trying to
force air into his lungs. Soon he's ferried out to
the wine of an ambulance tron. It's the last thing
(04:41):
Kim Chall will ever here. Within fifteen minutes, he is
dead and nobody knows why. Hours later, as police review
Kim Chall's strange and sudden death, they're left with the
most basic and bizarre question, how did Kim die? Who
(05:03):
were these women, what did they smear onto his face?
And why of all people did they attack him? But
it soon became clear that Kim Chal It was not
your average visitor to Kuala Lympur International Airport. Discovered inside
his backpack is approximately one hundred and twenty thousand American
(05:27):
dollars in cash, as well as twelve vials of atropine,
a rare antidote that's used to treat deadly chemical attacks.
Analysis from a lab also reveals that the substance smeared
onto his face was VX nerve agent, one of the
deadliest chemical weapons on the planet. Within twenty four hours,
(05:51):
they learned that Kim Chal was not the man he
claimed to be. The name on his passport was just
an alias, a cover. The dead man's real name was
Kim Jong Nam, and while most people had never heard
of him, International experts knew him well. He was North Korean,
(06:15):
the firstborn son of the former Supreme Leader Kim jong il.
Years ago, many had considered Kim jong Nam the front
runner to the Hermit Kingdom's throne. And his death it
became clear that this was more than a strange random accident.
It was an assassination and early Valentine's Day present from
(06:39):
the North Korean regime. The question is why Hi? My
name is Eden Late and on this podcast we dive
(07:02):
into the sad life and strange death of the man
who should have inherited North Korea's throne, Kim Jong Nam.
Join me as we explore the one time airs rise
and fall from Chong Nam's early promise he should have
been the successor to the palace. Intrigued, there's a lot
of cloak and dagger, you know, James Bond stuff around
(07:26):
Kim John Nam to the power struggles that spelled his doom.
Anybody who thinks differently is a threat and needs to
be eliminated. This is Big Brother, the rise and fall
of North Korea's forgotten prince. Here's the thing you need
(07:54):
to know about the brothers Kim to the late nineties
to the early two thousand's North Korea watchers never considered
Kim Jongan, the current leader, to be much of a
threat or even a contender for the throne at all.
He was Chong Il's third son, he was unknown throughout
(08:14):
his own country. When it came to his father's hereditary title,
he stood in the back of the line. At the
front Chongan's big brother, Kim jong Nam. Many assumed that
the family patriarch, Kim jong Il, was grooming chong Nam
to rule the country to make him the quote great successor.
(08:38):
After cheng Nam graduated high school, he had become something
of a computer whiz and was awarded a post leading
the regime's Ministry of People's Security. The job put tong
Nam in charge of the country's police, prisons, and interment camps.
It also made him responsible for gathering intel from North
(08:58):
Korea's vast net work of informants who surveilled the country's
the centers. In other words, Kim jong Nam spent his
early twenties serving as North Korea's top cop. Kim John
was part of a cohort of Core Leadership. That's Michael Madden,
the founder and director of real leadership. Watch and as
(09:22):
you can tell, his audio is distorted, and that's because
he was using a burner phone user phone, so I
don't know what what you knows on my phone these days.
In fact, his call quality can be so distorted that
we've asked a voice actor to read his answers. Kim
Jong Nam was part of a cohort core leadership that
(09:45):
would go with people from the State Security Department, Secret police.
Madden remembers Kim Jong Nam's early days working for the regime.
What they would do is they would do inspections of
these economics sites, whether they were farms, industrial factories. They
would do these audits and they would find people who
they thought had been deceptive in their reports, and then
(10:08):
these people would be publicly executed and their families sent
to labor in central political detention facilities. Essentially, it was
Kim Jong Nam's job to make sure people weren't defrauding
the regime and, by extension, stealing money from his father.
It was an important job and a signal to many
(10:28):
that someday Cheng Nam would be the one to push
the big red button. He'd be the guy high stepping
soldiers would salute as they marched through kyong Yang. The palaces,
the power, the attention, all destined to be his, and
then it fell apart. By the time Kim Jong ill
(10:51):
died in two thousand and eleven, Kim Jong Nam was
a pariah, an outcast. He hadn't lived in North Korea
for more than a decade, aid he'd been exiled to
the glittering lights of Macau, which is probably the last
place anyone would expect to find a royal member of
the Kim dynasty. Macau was and is China's capitalist wonderland,
(11:16):
the Monte Carlo of the East. It's a modern island oasis,
filled with flashy skyscrapers and neon lights. It's also the
gambling capital of the world, a place crawling with so
many high rollers it hauls in three times as much
revenue as Las Vegas. Anna Fifield, a journalist and author
(11:36):
of the book The Great Successor, explains why such a
city would appeal to the exiled prince. I think Macau
was really the perfect place for Kim Jong Nam to
be that the gambling Mica of Asia. Kim Jong Nam
had a reputation of being a playboy, being a bon
(11:57):
vivon loving, you know, going around the place living the
good life. He had one family and children in Beijing,
another family in Macau. He apparently had girlfriends all around
the place. He knew his wine, He enjoyed, you know,
being a rich princeling living the jet set life, much
(12:20):
like a Russian oligarch kid, or you know, maybe much
like a Hilton or a Kadeshian or something. According to locals,
Kim jong Nam was often seen hitting the slot machines
and betting big on bakara, dining at the city's restaurants,
and boozing it up in high end whiskey bars. He
had a reputation as a heavy spender who was familiar
(12:42):
with the back alleys of the world's red light districts
and the prostitutes who worked them. It seemed that he
loved living the high life, hopping from country to country
with a fake Portuguese passport. By the looks of it,
Kim jong Nam was no longer line to the North
Korean throne. He wore jeans and T shirts and even
(13:05):
sported facial hair, fashion choices that would be impossible in
his own country, and worse, he used social media. He
was posting pictures on his Facebook page standing standing outside
um various American armed casino chains. There. Online, he kept
(13:25):
in touch with classmates from his high school and even
like the page of a comedian who spoofed his younger
brother under the stage name Kim Jong Um with an M.
Kim Jong Nam would even exchange emails with journalists and
was consistent with his messages. He had no political ambitions
(13:46):
and no desire to lead North Korea. He wished his
baby half brother the best, and lastly, he just wanted
to live his life with his family and be left alone.
Here's the ill Kim Jong Nam in his own words,
the appointment of a successor is totally my father's decision.
(14:07):
So he makes his decisions or he doesn't need to
talk to me or talk to another person. I think
this kind of question you have to ask my father
to my brother now, not to me. I can't, but
I'm sorry you cannot. So I cannot answer this question
because I'm not involved in political any affair in Astoria,
(14:30):
and that's how it was supposed to be. Just months
before Kim Jong Ill died, he prepared his will and testament.
In it, he gave the future successor Kim jong un
advice on policy and leadership. He also made it clear
that the new leader should leave his big brother alone,
stating that Kim jong Nam was not to be quote
(14:53):
targeted or harassed. But on February two thousand seventeen, as
Kim jong Nam stared up at the fluorescent lights of
an airport hospital clinic, dipping in and out of consciousness
for the last time, it became evident that somebody had
not honored his father's dying wish. Was Kim jong Un
(15:15):
hunting his brother? If he already had the power, the throne,
the honor of being named supreme leader, why chase Kim
jong Nam down to an airport in Malaysia, and why
go through such elaborate means to end his life? North
(15:49):
Korean leaders have brother dies in Kuala Lumpur. My name
CCTV footage services showing attack Kim jong Ki. Kim jong
(16:10):
Nam's death was never supposed to be primetime news. About
four hours after the so called Kim chall died, police
reviewed his documents and started making calls. His passport listed
his home country as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea
or DPRK, the official name for North Korea, but detectives
(16:32):
made a mistake. Instead of notifying the communist regime of
the death, they accidentally contacted the embassy for South Korea.
It wasn't long before the National Intelligence Service, kind of
like South Korea's CIA, caught on, realizing that the man
called Kim Chall was in fact the estranged brother of
(16:54):
North Korea's ruler. It became clear that the man's death
was likely an assassinate sian that one mistake would change
the dynamic of the entire investigation. Shortly after, the South
Korean Intelligence Agency would leak the news to the press,
and within twenty four hours, Kim's death was making international headlines.
(17:17):
Journalists like Anna Fifield, who was then reporting for The
Washington Post, rushed to Kuala Lumpur. As soon as I
heard that Kim Jong Nam had died in Malaysia. I
got on the next plane to Kuala Lumpa and immediately
went to terminal, to the Air Asia Budget terminal, which
is where it happened. It all looked very normal at
(17:39):
that stage, and I walked around the kiosk where he
was trying to check into his flight. You know, it
took a long time, several days for the Malaysians to
realize that this was a highly toxic chemical agent and
actually caught an off this airport and do a thorough
deep clean. So it was a kind of surreal situation Asian. Wait,
(18:00):
you wouldn't have known anything had happened. In the hours
following Kim Jong Nam's death, detectives began pouring over airports
CCTV camera footage. They closely watched the movements of the
two mysterious women who had smeared VX nerve agent across
his face. They quickly noticed that these two women were
(18:21):
not acting alone. Investigators noticed a Korean man plugging a
black suitcase, shadowing tong Nam everywhere he went, from the
information desk after the assault, to the police, and then
trailing him to the clinic. Even as chong Nam was dying,
(18:41):
the man lurked nearby, only leaving once the prince was
lifeless on a stretcher. Immediately after, the man ducked into
a bathroom and re emerged in a fresh change of clothes.
That wasn't the only suspicious character investing gators found. There
(19:01):
was also a pair of Korean men, both in baseball caps,
carrying backpacks. Footage shows them standing next to the two
women minutes before the attack, applying a substance to their hands. Afterwards,
both men slip into a bathroom, ditched their backpacks, and
change their clothes. One even shaves his goatee. And there's
(19:26):
a fourth man. Earlier footage shows him sitting in a
coffee shop with one of the female assailants, apparently debriefing her.
In the main terminal, all four men check in for
a flight. A North Korean airline attendant plus a diplomat
from the North Korean embassy whisked them through security. Footage
(19:51):
shows the men smiling and laughing as they wait in line.
Days later, investigators would find their flight itinerary. The four
North Koreans who lived Kuala Lumpa in a real hurry
after that attack on Kim jong Nam, they went to
a Jakata Dubai Vladivostock pyeong Yang. They kong Yang, the
(20:15):
capital of North Korea. By the time the four nameless
North Koreans boarded their flight, Kim jong Nam's body was
still warm, and by the time investigators realized what exactly
had happened, the men were already back in the DPRK
(20:37):
Suddenly the death of Kim Jong nam was an international crime,
and as investigators tried to pinpoint the men's identities and
what role they might have played in the assassination, they
looked to question anybody who might have come in contact
with them, and that's when the investigations started to get
(20:59):
well messy. Here's the thing you need to know about Malaysia.
Until very recently, it maintained close ties with North Korea.
The DPRK imported oil and rubber, and even noodles from Malaysia,
while the islands received steel and iron in return. North
(21:20):
Korea's airline air Kodio, regularly flew in and out of
the country. In fact, high level North Korean citizens could
travel to Malaysia without a visa, and Malaysians could make
similar visa free trips to Pyongyang. Approximately one thousand North
Koreans lived and worked in Malaysia. The country shared such
(21:43):
close ties that in two thousand and thirteen, Kim Jongan
received an honorary doctorate from a Malaysian university. This often
surprises people. You've probably heard pundits called North Korea a
hermit kingdom, the terms images of an isolated society in
perpetual lockdown, cut off from the rest of the world,
(22:07):
and there's some truth to that. For most citizens in
North Korea, there is no Internet access, information is tightly controlled,
and most North Koreans can't travel freely around their own country,
let alone abroad. But a hermit kingdom, they are not
a hermit kingdom. That's Jenny town, a senior fellow at
(22:31):
the Simpson Center in Washington, d C. North Korea really
has diplomatic relations with about forty four countries, I believe,
and they have embassies in several countries as well. I
think there is a sense that we're more cut off
from them than they are from the world. Indeed, North
(22:51):
Korea maintains diplomatic relations with most countries. It has embassies
all over the globe, including in liberal democracy such as Spain, Italy, Sweden, Mexico,
South Africa, and others. It receives billions of dollars worth
of imports from China, millions from Russia, Brazil and India too.
(23:14):
There's a lot of business interests. A lot of it
comes from Southeast Asia, some from India, especially in terms
of the mining sectors. There was at one time a
big push in europe Um looking at North Korea as
an outsourcing for it. There's longstanding history between North Korea
(23:37):
and countries, for instance, in Africa, in South America, and
especially with countries that have either been dictatorships or a
part of the communist block, and North Korea returns the favor.
Each year it illegally exports millions of dollars of coal.
It's spent decades exporting missiles and heavy arms to Ron.
(24:00):
It even deployed troops to Syria to fortify the regime
during its civil war. Countries that are willing to ignore sanctions,
these are all wide open um for the North Koreans,
and the North Koreans are very good at identifying and
cultivating relationships and and finding people to work with them
(24:23):
as well. And North Korea's net is wide. They've built
libraries and Mauritius sewers in Rwanda, a machete factory in Burundi,
and a concrete factory in Somalia. Some sources indicate that
they've even exported guns to places like Sweden. If that
(24:43):
surprises you, you're not alone. The image of North Korea
as a reclusive, closed off loaner of a nation is
a caricature, one that leads us to mock, infantilized and
underestimate them as a country. But it's not a that accurate.
North Korea has not always been a hermit kingdom, but
(25:04):
has actually been an active player on the international stage.
That's Dr Benjamin Young. I'm an assistant professor and Homeland
Security and Emergency Preparedness at Virginia Commonwealth University, and as
he explains, North Korea has been meddling with international affairs
for a long time. They achieved this by sending their
(25:28):
people and ideas abroad, from building statues and palaces in
Africa and Southeast Asia to sending military trainers too as
far flung as Grenada. In the nineteen eighties, North Korean
trainers were sent to Zimbabwe to help Robert Mugabe cracked
(25:49):
down on descent and this was what North Korea was
able to do. It had its niches around the world,
and one of the niches was brutality. Nor Korea has
hosted foreign soldiers on its own soil, putting Irish revolutionaries
through boot camp and teaching Mexican insurgents the art of tekwondo.
(26:11):
The United States maintains that its stores have always been
closed to the DPRK, but that's not entirely true. So
North Korea actually took out full page ads in the
New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe. North
Koreans have paid for these ads, and so they were
essentially free to put up whatever they want. Ads aren't
(26:35):
the only things to have fallen through the cracks. The
water surrounding North Korea are famous for their seafood, and
the country salmon halls have worked their way into the
frozen food aisles of big box stores. There's even evidence
that the animation of some major motion pictures have been
accidentally outsourced to animators in North Korea. All of this
(26:57):
is to say that North Korea isn't a pariah state
you might think, and that was especially true in a
place like Malaysia. When Kim Jong Nam was killed, movement
between the two countries was relatively fluid. This made Malaysia
a perfect hub for illicit activities, from illegal arm sales
(27:19):
to espionage to money laundering, and it also made Malaysia
one of the best places for North Korea's assassins to hide.
(27:55):
The scene outside the North Korean embassy in Kuala lumpur Is.
You usually serene the two story building in the city's
western suburbs as a hulking for quiet compound, a seaside
McMansion surrounded by a thick concrete fence and swaying palm trees.
On February, the scene outside the embassy was much different.
(28:20):
Dozens of journalists crowded the front gate, microphones outstretched as
news outlets from across the globe jockey for a scoop.
That day, North Korea's ambassador to Malaysia held a news
conference and launched a string of denials. He denied that
Kim Jong Nam had died of a VX attack. He
(28:40):
painted from the heart attic at the airport it was
a natural dist He denied that North Korea was remotely involved.
Now there are so many rumors spread to the public
to defame the image of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea,
the Malaysian police should bear the full responsibility for them.
(29:04):
He even denied that the body belonged to Kim Jong Nam.
The embassy has already identified his identity, named Kim Tull.
The request for the DNA simple is postus One. North
Korean diplomats argued that a formal autopsy or any formal
(29:26):
identification like a DNA test was excessive. They claimed that
Malaysian authorities were colluding with South Korean spies, trying to
quote besmirched the image of our republic at the time,
and A Fifield was on the scene reporting the story.
We had the North Korean diplomats um clearly, I think,
(29:50):
unsure of what to do. The ambassador was outside the
the embassy gates briefing the media flatly denied eyeing everything
that had happened. The North Koreans were quite frankly getting
sick of the attention. When I went to the North
Korean embassy in Kuala Lympa and went up to the
(30:11):
gates there, the North Koreans had removed the button from
the buzzer on the door so that nobody could ring
the doorbell anymore, because they were obviously so fed up
with pisky journalists coming to ask questions. What the embassy
officials failed to mention was that two North Koreans, a
diplomat and an airline employee, who had helped the four
(30:33):
mysterious assassins get their flights home, were camped inside the
embassy and they refused to leave. The Malaysian police were
desperate to interview the two men. Here's Khaled Abu Bakar,
the Inspector General of the Royal Malaysian Police Force, questioned
(30:54):
the embassy. North Korean embassy, who uh allow us to
interview both of them? Uh we hope that the for
your embassy were all previous. Allow us to improve them,
(31:14):
interview them quickly. If not, we will compare them to conpoys.
But North Korea held its ground. The men refused to
leave the embassy. In response, Malaysia refused to give up
the body, making the morgue the latest battleground. Journalists outside
(31:36):
the hospital morgue waiting to see who would come to
identify the body. You know, The North Koreans were insisting
that this you know, North Korean official called Kim Charles,
as far as they were saying, be returned to them.
And then suddenly this happened. One night after refusing to
(31:56):
give up Him Jong Nam's body, an attempted break in
at the Quala lymp morgue, tensions flared. Within hours, an
armed Special Operations police unit was stationed outside the mortuary.
More media swirld so there was a lot of talk
that his son would come to come to Kuala Lumper
(32:20):
to identify the body, potentially give a DNA match. This
was big news. Kim Jong Nam's firstborn son, Kim Hans Hall,
lived in Macau but was relatively unknown and rarely made
public appearances. Now the question was would he really show
up in Malaysia an a young Asian guy with geek
(32:42):
sheet glasses and you know, spiky cool hair at Kuala
Lympa that over those few days you know, suddenly had
the international media hounding him. A few days later, it
was rumored he came to identify the body, arriving disguise
as a special police officer for his safety. But nobody
knows if Kim Hansho did come. Regardless, police were able
(33:06):
to confirm that the dead man truly was Kim Jong Nam.
We have now established that kind is Kinjo Nah. We
have fulfield laws on his identification. A few days later,
(33:29):
the North Korean ambassador reappeared to the press and called
the identification a sham. The standoff between the North Korean
holdouts and the Malaysian police continued because one of the
suspects was North Korea's second secretary, a diplomatic post he
had diplomatic community and the airline employee remains safe as
(33:49):
long as he didn't leave the embassy grounds. In an interview,
investigator called Abu Bakhar seemed to admit as much, you
don't have to be afraid. You should, you should, you
should corporate no arras on will be applied. But as
guards and journalists surrounded the embassy waiting for the persons
(34:13):
of interest to make a move, it became increasingly clear
that North Korea was not going to flinch. Even Buckhart
started to sound increasingly desperate. I'm saying the game that
the Korea not corporate thing with this indecent investigation. If
he thinks five, yes, we will win. Outside, definitely somebody
(34:33):
will come out, he said. But they didn't, and as
the stalemate stretched into weeks, the DPRK made a decision.
If the North Koreans hold up in the embassy weren't
allowed to freely leave, then all Malaysians in North Korea
would be trapped. Two The North Koreans took all of
(34:54):
the Malaysians in Pyongyang and the Malaysian diplomats and their
families essentially put them onto embassy erased and wouldn't allow
them to leave North Korea until the North Korean nationals
in Malaysia had been allowed to leave. Hostage diplomacy one
of North Korea's great tricks. Suddenly it became clear that
(35:16):
North Korea and Malaysia weren't just fighting over a dead body.
They were sprinting headfirst into diplomatic crisis of international proportions,
one that would entangle six foreign countries and three nuclear powers,
the United States included. Meanwhile, remember those women who smeared
(35:36):
Kim Jong Nam's face with VX nerve agent. As all
of this drama was unfolding, they were both sitting in
a Malaysian prison cell. Unlike everybody else involved, they weren't spies,
they weren't diplomats, they weren't even North Korean. They were
sex workers, and they had been caught within days of
(35:58):
Kim Jong Nam's death. And as they sat behind bars,
they both kept asking police the same questions. Is this
part of the prank? I was told I was on
a prank game show. The story that unfolds would reveal
a bizarre murder plot with murky intent. That is, unless
(36:22):
you understand North Korea's motives in North Korea as in
the mall. Perhaps it's business. It's not personal. When somebody
challenges you, that challenger must be eliminated. He's sending a message.
You know, anyone anywhere in the world, I can get
you and it will hurt. If you have the attention
(36:45):
of the world and the world will listen to you,
then yes, North Korea is going to hand you down.
I'm evenly join me next time as we unraveled the
most audacious political assassin nation of the twenty one century
and try to understand the strange logic behind North Korea's policies, paranoia,
(37:08):
and the reasons Kim Jong Nam was a marked man
Until next time. This is Big Brother. Big Brother is
a production of School of Humans and I Heart Radio
and hosted by me Eden Lane. Lucas Riley is our writer,
(37:30):
co director and associate producer. Amelia Brock is our senior producer,
co director and editor. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, ELC. Crowley,
and Jason English. Our fact checker is Aaron Blakemore. Music
composed by Jason Todd Shannon and Tunelauters. Original score mix
by Vick Stafford. Audio editing by Jesse Nice Wanger sound
(37:54):
design and mixed by Harper W. Harris, Audio correction by
Josh Fisher, Boy acting by Mark Chung, Daniel Kim, Judy,
Alice Lee, Sean mckeeth, Mike Coscarelli and Katie Wong. Special
thanks to Ryan Murdoch and Will Pearson. We like to
acknowledge the work of Ryan White, Jessica Hargrave and Doug
(38:15):
Bob Clark. Sam licensed from the Associated Press, The Star
of Malaysia, A Jean France Press, Reuters and Kenny TV.
If you're enjoying the podcast, help us get the word
out by leaving a rating in your favorite podcast app.
Until next time, I'm even Lee School of Humans
It's February two thousand seventeen, the day before Valentine's Day.
Kim Tal is standing inside Kuala Lympur International Airport, staring
up at the departures board. It's busy. Throngs of passengers
glide through the airport's spacious hall, making their way from
(00:30):
check in to security. This is Malaysia's biggest and busiest
international airport. On a usual day, nearly a hundred and
sixty thousand passengers travel through here. At nine in the morning,
Kim blends into the crowd. He's bald and pudgy, wearing
light blue jeans and a gray blazer, a black backpack
(00:53):
slung casually around his right shoulder. Kim gazes up at
the list of departures and sees that his flight to Macau,
his home in the south of China, is on schedule.
He begins walking toward the ticketing area. Little does he know,
but he is being watched. Kim approaches an air Asia kiosk.
(01:19):
As he enters his flight information, he doesn't notice two
young women, both thin with dark hair, slowly creeping up
behind him. Suddenly, a pair of hands clasp around Kim's
face from behind. Is as if someone is trying to
surprise him, like a game of Guess who, But instead
(01:41):
the woman wipes her hands across his cheeks, pressing her
palms firmly against his eyes, his nose, his mouth. Kim
jerks his head away just as the first woman releases
her grip. The second woman, wearing a T shirt that
says L O L, does the same. She smears her
(02:01):
hands all over his face. Kim thrashes his head to
break free. The woman yells sorry and scurries away, and
then as quickly as they appeared, they're gone. The women
vanish into the crowd. Kim chal takes a deep breath
(02:23):
and tries to collect himself. He checks his belongings. The
woman didn't take his bag or I D or not
anything from his pockets. All they did was smear a
greasy substance over his eyes and nose. It feels like
motor oil, and then it starts to burn. Kim staggers
(02:46):
the closest information desk, his nose starts to run. The
pain on his skin intensifies. He explains to an employe
that he's been assaulted, that two strangers came up behind
him and rubbed oil or grease or something all over
his face. He tries to wipe the grease off, but
(03:09):
the steam is so intense he can hardly keep his
eyes open. Very painful, he explains, taking deeper and deeper breaths,
Very painful. The attendant walks Kim to three officials through
labored breaths. He explains the story again, be attacked, the grease,
(03:32):
the pain. The officials nod and lead him down a
long hallway to the airport clinic. Kim begins to limp,
and his vision blurs. He groans in pain as his chest,
his lungs, his heart tightened like a clamp. Inside the clinic,
doctors measure his vitals. The burning becomes relentless. His breathing
(03:58):
is wapid and shallow. Somebody snaps a picture of Kim
chal He slumped in a chair, his jacket cast off,
his pot belly peeking out of his royal blue tshirt.
His eyes are half open, but he's unconscious. At this point,
he's barely breathing. Seconds later, medics laid him flat on
(04:20):
an orange stretcher and strap an oxygen mask over his
nose and mouth, squeezing it again and again, trying to
force air into his lungs. Soon he's ferried out to
the wine of an ambulance tron. It's the last thing
(04:41):
Kim Chall will ever here. Within fifteen minutes, he is
dead and nobody knows why. Hours later, as police review
Kim Chall's strange and sudden death, they're left with the
most basic and bizarre question, how did Kim die? Who
(05:03):
were these women, what did they smear onto his face?
And why of all people did they attack him? But
it soon became clear that Kim Chal It was not
your average visitor to Kuala Lympur International Airport. Discovered inside
his backpack is approximately one hundred and twenty thousand American
(05:27):
dollars in cash, as well as twelve vials of atropine,
a rare antidote that's used to treat deadly chemical attacks.
Analysis from a lab also reveals that the substance smeared
onto his face was VX nerve agent, one of the
deadliest chemical weapons on the planet. Within twenty four hours,
(05:51):
they learned that Kim Chal was not the man he
claimed to be. The name on his passport was just
an alias, a cover. The dead man's real name was
Kim Jong Nam, and while most people had never heard
of him, International experts knew him well. He was North Korean,
(06:15):
the firstborn son of the former Supreme Leader Kim jong il.
Years ago, many had considered Kim jong Nam the front
runner to the Hermit Kingdom's throne. And his death it
became clear that this was more than a strange random accident.
It was an assassination and early Valentine's Day present from
(06:39):
the North Korean regime. The question is why Hi? My
name is Eden Late and on this podcast we dive
(07:02):
into the sad life and strange death of the man
who should have inherited North Korea's throne, Kim Jong Nam.
Join me as we explore the one time airs rise
and fall from Chong Nam's early promise he should have
been the successor to the palace. Intrigued, there's a lot
of cloak and dagger, you know, James Bond stuff around
(07:26):
Kim John Nam to the power struggles that spelled his doom.
Anybody who thinks differently is a threat and needs to
be eliminated. This is Big Brother, the rise and fall
of North Korea's forgotten prince. Here's the thing you need
(07:54):
to know about the brothers Kim to the late nineties
to the early two thousand's North Korea watchers never considered
Kim Jongan, the current leader, to be much of a
threat or even a contender for the throne at all.
He was Chong Il's third son, he was unknown throughout
(08:14):
his own country. When it came to his father's hereditary title,
he stood in the back of the line. At the
front Chongan's big brother, Kim jong Nam. Many assumed that
the family patriarch, Kim jong Il, was grooming chong Nam
to rule the country to make him the quote great successor.
(08:38):
After cheng Nam graduated high school, he had become something
of a computer whiz and was awarded a post leading
the regime's Ministry of People's Security. The job put tong
Nam in charge of the country's police, prisons, and interment camps.
It also made him responsible for gathering intel from North
(08:58):
Korea's vast net work of informants who surveilled the country's
the centers. In other words, Kim jong Nam spent his
early twenties serving as North Korea's top cop. Kim John
was part of a cohort of Core Leadership. That's Michael Madden,
the founder and director of real leadership. Watch and as
(09:22):
you can tell, his audio is distorted, and that's because
he was using a burner phone user phone, so I
don't know what what you knows on my phone these days.
In fact, his call quality can be so distorted that
we've asked a voice actor to read his answers. Kim
Jong Nam was part of a cohort core leadership that
(09:45):
would go with people from the State Security Department, Secret police.
Madden remembers Kim Jong Nam's early days working for the regime.
What they would do is they would do inspections of
these economics sites, whether they were farms, industrial factories. They
would do these audits and they would find people who
they thought had been deceptive in their reports, and then
(10:08):
these people would be publicly executed and their families sent
to labor in central political detention facilities. Essentially, it was
Kim Jong Nam's job to make sure people weren't defrauding
the regime and, by extension, stealing money from his father.
It was an important job and a signal to many
(10:28):
that someday Cheng Nam would be the one to push
the big red button. He'd be the guy high stepping
soldiers would salute as they marched through kyong Yang. The palaces,
the power, the attention, all destined to be his, and
then it fell apart. By the time Kim Jong ill
(10:51):
died in two thousand and eleven, Kim Jong Nam was
a pariah, an outcast. He hadn't lived in North Korea
for more than a decade, aid he'd been exiled to
the glittering lights of Macau, which is probably the last
place anyone would expect to find a royal member of
the Kim dynasty. Macau was and is China's capitalist wonderland,
(11:16):
the Monte Carlo of the East. It's a modern island oasis,
filled with flashy skyscrapers and neon lights. It's also the
gambling capital of the world, a place crawling with so
many high rollers it hauls in three times as much
revenue as Las Vegas. Anna Fifield, a journalist and author
(11:36):
of the book The Great Successor, explains why such a
city would appeal to the exiled prince. I think Macau
was really the perfect place for Kim Jong Nam to
be that the gambling Mica of Asia. Kim Jong Nam
had a reputation of being a playboy, being a bon
(11:57):
vivon loving, you know, going around the place living the
good life. He had one family and children in Beijing,
another family in Macau. He apparently had girlfriends all around
the place. He knew his wine, He enjoyed, you know,
being a rich princeling living the jet set life, much
(12:20):
like a Russian oligarch kid, or you know, maybe much
like a Hilton or a Kadeshian or something. According to locals,
Kim jong Nam was often seen hitting the slot machines
and betting big on bakara, dining at the city's restaurants,
and boozing it up in high end whiskey bars. He
had a reputation as a heavy spender who was familiar
(12:42):
with the back alleys of the world's red light districts
and the prostitutes who worked them. It seemed that he
loved living the high life, hopping from country to country
with a fake Portuguese passport. By the looks of it,
Kim jong Nam was no longer line to the North
Korean throne. He wore jeans and T shirts and even
(13:05):
sported facial hair, fashion choices that would be impossible in
his own country, and worse, he used social media. He
was posting pictures on his Facebook page standing standing outside
um various American armed casino chains. There. Online, he kept
(13:25):
in touch with classmates from his high school and even
like the page of a comedian who spoofed his younger
brother under the stage name Kim Jong Um with an M.
Kim Jong Nam would even exchange emails with journalists and
was consistent with his messages. He had no political ambitions
(13:46):
and no desire to lead North Korea. He wished his
baby half brother the best, and lastly, he just wanted
to live his life with his family and be left alone.
Here's the ill Kim Jong Nam in his own words,
the appointment of a successor is totally my father's decision.
(14:07):
So he makes his decisions or he doesn't need to
talk to me or talk to another person. I think
this kind of question you have to ask my father
to my brother now, not to me. I can't, but
I'm sorry you cannot. So I cannot answer this question
because I'm not involved in political any affair in Astoria,
(14:30):
and that's how it was supposed to be. Just months
before Kim Jong Ill died, he prepared his will and testament.
In it, he gave the future successor Kim jong un
advice on policy and leadership. He also made it clear
that the new leader should leave his big brother alone,
stating that Kim jong Nam was not to be quote
(14:53):
targeted or harassed. But on February two thousand seventeen, as
Kim jong Nam stared up at the fluorescent lights of
an airport hospital clinic, dipping in and out of consciousness
for the last time, it became evident that somebody had
not honored his father's dying wish. Was Kim jong Un
(15:15):
hunting his brother? If he already had the power, the throne,
the honor of being named supreme leader, why chase Kim
jong Nam down to an airport in Malaysia, and why
go through such elaborate means to end his life? North
(15:49):
Korean leaders have brother dies in Kuala Lumpur. My name
CCTV footage services showing attack Kim jong Ki. Kim jong
(16:10):
Nam's death was never supposed to be primetime news. About
four hours after the so called Kim chall died, police
reviewed his documents and started making calls. His passport listed
his home country as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea
or DPRK, the official name for North Korea, but detectives
(16:32):
made a mistake. Instead of notifying the communist regime of
the death, they accidentally contacted the embassy for South Korea.
It wasn't long before the National Intelligence Service, kind of
like South Korea's CIA, caught on, realizing that the man
called Kim Chall was in fact the estranged brother of
(16:54):
North Korea's ruler. It became clear that the man's death
was likely an assassinate sian that one mistake would change
the dynamic of the entire investigation. Shortly after, the South
Korean Intelligence Agency would leak the news to the press,
and within twenty four hours, Kim's death was making international headlines.
(17:17):
Journalists like Anna Fifield, who was then reporting for The
Washington Post, rushed to Kuala Lumpur. As soon as I
heard that Kim Jong Nam had died in Malaysia. I
got on the next plane to Kuala Lumpa and immediately
went to terminal, to the Air Asia Budget terminal, which
is where it happened. It all looked very normal at
(17:39):
that stage, and I walked around the kiosk where he
was trying to check into his flight. You know, it
took a long time, several days for the Malaysians to
realize that this was a highly toxic chemical agent and
actually caught an off this airport and do a thorough
deep clean. So it was a kind of surreal situation Asian. Wait,
(18:00):
you wouldn't have known anything had happened. In the hours
following Kim Jong Nam's death, detectives began pouring over airports
CCTV camera footage. They closely watched the movements of the
two mysterious women who had smeared VX nerve agent across
his face. They quickly noticed that these two women were
(18:21):
not acting alone. Investigators noticed a Korean man plugging a
black suitcase, shadowing tong Nam everywhere he went, from the
information desk after the assault, to the police, and then
trailing him to the clinic. Even as chong Nam was dying,
(18:41):
the man lurked nearby, only leaving once the prince was
lifeless on a stretcher. Immediately after, the man ducked into
a bathroom and re emerged in a fresh change of clothes.
That wasn't the only suspicious character investing gators found. There
(19:01):
was also a pair of Korean men, both in baseball caps,
carrying backpacks. Footage shows them standing next to the two
women minutes before the attack, applying a substance to their hands. Afterwards,
both men slip into a bathroom, ditched their backpacks, and
change their clothes. One even shaves his goatee. And there's
(19:26):
a fourth man. Earlier footage shows him sitting in a
coffee shop with one of the female assailants, apparently debriefing her.
In the main terminal, all four men check in for
a flight. A North Korean airline attendant plus a diplomat
from the North Korean embassy whisked them through security. Footage
(19:51):
shows the men smiling and laughing as they wait in line.
Days later, investigators would find their flight itinerary. The four
North Koreans who lived Kuala Lumpa in a real hurry
after that attack on Kim jong Nam, they went to
a Jakata Dubai Vladivostock pyeong Yang. They kong Yang, the
(20:15):
capital of North Korea. By the time the four nameless
North Koreans boarded their flight, Kim jong Nam's body was
still warm, and by the time investigators realized what exactly
had happened, the men were already back in the DPRK
(20:37):
Suddenly the death of Kim Jong nam was an international crime,
and as investigators tried to pinpoint the men's identities and
what role they might have played in the assassination, they
looked to question anybody who might have come in contact
with them, and that's when the investigations started to get
(20:59):
well messy. Here's the thing you need to know about Malaysia.
Until very recently, it maintained close ties with North Korea.
The DPRK imported oil and rubber, and even noodles from Malaysia,
while the islands received steel and iron in return. North
(21:20):
Korea's airline air Kodio, regularly flew in and out of
the country. In fact, high level North Korean citizens could
travel to Malaysia without a visa, and Malaysians could make
similar visa free trips to Pyongyang. Approximately one thousand North
Koreans lived and worked in Malaysia. The country shared such
(21:43):
close ties that in two thousand and thirteen, Kim Jongan
received an honorary doctorate from a Malaysian university. This often
surprises people. You've probably heard pundits called North Korea a
hermit kingdom, the terms images of an isolated society in
perpetual lockdown, cut off from the rest of the world,
(22:07):
and there's some truth to that. For most citizens in
North Korea, there is no Internet access, information is tightly controlled,
and most North Koreans can't travel freely around their own country,
let alone abroad. But a hermit kingdom, they are not
a hermit kingdom. That's Jenny town, a senior fellow at
(22:31):
the Simpson Center in Washington, d C. North Korea really
has diplomatic relations with about forty four countries, I believe,
and they have embassies in several countries as well. I
think there is a sense that we're more cut off
from them than they are from the world. Indeed, North
(22:51):
Korea maintains diplomatic relations with most countries. It has embassies
all over the globe, including in liberal democracy such as Spain, Italy, Sweden, Mexico,
South Africa, and others. It receives billions of dollars worth
of imports from China, millions from Russia, Brazil and India too.
(23:14):
There's a lot of business interests. A lot of it
comes from Southeast Asia, some from India, especially in terms
of the mining sectors. There was at one time a
big push in europe Um looking at North Korea as
an outsourcing for it. There's longstanding history between North Korea
(23:37):
and countries, for instance, in Africa, in South America, and
especially with countries that have either been dictatorships or a
part of the communist block, and North Korea returns the favor.
Each year it illegally exports millions of dollars of coal.
It's spent decades exporting missiles and heavy arms to Ron.
(24:00):
It even deployed troops to Syria to fortify the regime
during its civil war. Countries that are willing to ignore sanctions,
these are all wide open um for the North Koreans,
and the North Koreans are very good at identifying and
cultivating relationships and and finding people to work with them
(24:23):
as well. And North Korea's net is wide. They've built
libraries and Mauritius sewers in Rwanda, a machete factory in Burundi,
and a concrete factory in Somalia. Some sources indicate that
they've even exported guns to places like Sweden. If that
(24:43):
surprises you, you're not alone. The image of North Korea
as a reclusive, closed off loaner of a nation is
a caricature, one that leads us to mock, infantilized and
underestimate them as a country. But it's not a that accurate.
North Korea has not always been a hermit kingdom, but
(25:04):
has actually been an active player on the international stage.
That's Dr Benjamin Young. I'm an assistant professor and Homeland
Security and Emergency Preparedness at Virginia Commonwealth University, and as
he explains, North Korea has been meddling with international affairs
for a long time. They achieved this by sending their
(25:28):
people and ideas abroad, from building statues and palaces in
Africa and Southeast Asia to sending military trainers too as
far flung as Grenada. In the nineteen eighties, North Korean
trainers were sent to Zimbabwe to help Robert Mugabe cracked
(25:49):
down on descent and this was what North Korea was
able to do. It had its niches around the world,
and one of the niches was brutality. Nor Korea has
hosted foreign soldiers on its own soil, putting Irish revolutionaries
through boot camp and teaching Mexican insurgents the art of tekwondo.
(26:11):
The United States maintains that its stores have always been
closed to the DPRK, but that's not entirely true. So
North Korea actually took out full page ads in the
New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe. North
Koreans have paid for these ads, and so they were
essentially free to put up whatever they want. Ads aren't
(26:35):
the only things to have fallen through the cracks. The
water surrounding North Korea are famous for their seafood, and
the country salmon halls have worked their way into the
frozen food aisles of big box stores. There's even evidence
that the animation of some major motion pictures have been
accidentally outsourced to animators in North Korea. All of this
(26:57):
is to say that North Korea isn't a pariah state
you might think, and that was especially true in a
place like Malaysia. When Kim Jong Nam was killed, movement
between the two countries was relatively fluid. This made Malaysia
a perfect hub for illicit activities, from illegal arm sales
(27:19):
to espionage to money laundering, and it also made Malaysia
one of the best places for North Korea's assassins to hide.
(27:55):
The scene outside the North Korean embassy in Kuala lumpur Is.
You usually serene the two story building in the city's
western suburbs as a hulking for quiet compound, a seaside
McMansion surrounded by a thick concrete fence and swaying palm trees.
On February, the scene outside the embassy was much different.
(28:20):
Dozens of journalists crowded the front gate, microphones outstretched as
news outlets from across the globe jockey for a scoop.
That day, North Korea's ambassador to Malaysia held a news
conference and launched a string of denials. He denied that
Kim Jong Nam had died of a VX attack. He
(28:40):
painted from the heart attic at the airport it was
a natural dist He denied that North Korea was remotely involved.
Now there are so many rumors spread to the public
to defame the image of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea,
the Malaysian police should bear the full responsibility for them.
(29:04):
He even denied that the body belonged to Kim Jong Nam.
The embassy has already identified his identity, named Kim Tull.
The request for the DNA simple is postus One. North
Korean diplomats argued that a formal autopsy or any formal
(29:26):
identification like a DNA test was excessive. They claimed that
Malaysian authorities were colluding with South Korean spies, trying to
quote besmirched the image of our republic at the time,
and A Fifield was on the scene reporting the story.
We had the North Korean diplomats um clearly, I think,
(29:50):
unsure of what to do. The ambassador was outside the
the embassy gates briefing the media flatly denied eyeing everything
that had happened. The North Koreans were quite frankly getting
sick of the attention. When I went to the North
Korean embassy in Kuala Lympa and went up to the
(30:11):
gates there, the North Koreans had removed the button from
the buzzer on the door so that nobody could ring
the doorbell anymore, because they were obviously so fed up
with pisky journalists coming to ask questions. What the embassy
officials failed to mention was that two North Koreans, a
diplomat and an airline employee, who had helped the four
(30:33):
mysterious assassins get their flights home, were camped inside the
embassy and they refused to leave. The Malaysian police were
desperate to interview the two men. Here's Khaled Abu Bakar,
the Inspector General of the Royal Malaysian Police Force, questioned
(30:54):
the embassy. North Korean embassy, who uh allow us to
interview both of them? Uh we hope that the for
your embassy were all previous. Allow us to improve them,
(31:14):
interview them quickly. If not, we will compare them to conpoys.
But North Korea held its ground. The men refused to
leave the embassy. In response, Malaysia refused to give up
the body, making the morgue the latest battleground. Journalists outside
(31:36):
the hospital morgue waiting to see who would come to
identify the body. You know, The North Koreans were insisting
that this you know, North Korean official called Kim Charles,
as far as they were saying, be returned to them.
And then suddenly this happened. One night after refusing to
(31:56):
give up Him Jong Nam's body, an attempted break in
at the Quala lymp morgue, tensions flared. Within hours, an
armed Special Operations police unit was stationed outside the mortuary.
More media swirld so there was a lot of talk
that his son would come to come to Kuala Lumper
(32:20):
to identify the body, potentially give a DNA match. This
was big news. Kim Jong Nam's firstborn son, Kim Hans Hall,
lived in Macau but was relatively unknown and rarely made
public appearances. Now the question was would he really show
up in Malaysia an a young Asian guy with geek
(32:42):
sheet glasses and you know, spiky cool hair at Kuala
Lympa that over those few days you know, suddenly had
the international media hounding him. A few days later, it
was rumored he came to identify the body, arriving disguise
as a special police officer for his safety. But nobody
knows if Kim Hansho did come. Regardless, police were able
(33:06):
to confirm that the dead man truly was Kim Jong Nam.
We have now established that kind is Kinjo Nah. We
have fulfield laws on his identification. A few days later,
(33:29):
the North Korean ambassador reappeared to the press and called
the identification a sham. The standoff between the North Korean
holdouts and the Malaysian police continued because one of the
suspects was North Korea's second secretary, a diplomatic post he
had diplomatic community and the airline employee remains safe as
(33:49):
long as he didn't leave the embassy grounds. In an interview,
investigator called Abu Bakhar seemed to admit as much, you
don't have to be afraid. You should, you should, you
should corporate no arras on will be applied. But as
guards and journalists surrounded the embassy waiting for the persons
(34:13):
of interest to make a move, it became increasingly clear
that North Korea was not going to flinch. Even Buckhart
started to sound increasingly desperate. I'm saying the game that
the Korea not corporate thing with this indecent investigation. If
he thinks five, yes, we will win. Outside, definitely somebody
(34:33):
will come out, he said. But they didn't, and as
the stalemate stretched into weeks, the DPRK made a decision.
If the North Koreans hold up in the embassy weren't
allowed to freely leave, then all Malaysians in North Korea
would be trapped. Two The North Koreans took all of
(34:54):
the Malaysians in Pyongyang and the Malaysian diplomats and their
families essentially put them onto embassy erased and wouldn't allow
them to leave North Korea until the North Korean nationals
in Malaysia had been allowed to leave. Hostage diplomacy one
of North Korea's great tricks. Suddenly it became clear that
(35:16):
North Korea and Malaysia weren't just fighting over a dead body.
They were sprinting headfirst into diplomatic crisis of international proportions,
one that would entangle six foreign countries and three nuclear powers,
the United States included. Meanwhile, remember those women who smeared
(35:36):
Kim Jong Nam's face with VX nerve agent. As all
of this drama was unfolding, they were both sitting in
a Malaysian prison cell. Unlike everybody else involved, they weren't spies,
they weren't diplomats, they weren't even North Korean. They were
sex workers, and they had been caught within days of
(35:58):
Kim Jong Nam's death. And as they sat behind bars,
they both kept asking police the same questions. Is this
part of the prank? I was told I was on
a prank game show. The story that unfolds would reveal
a bizarre murder plot with murky intent. That is, unless
(36:22):
you understand North Korea's motives in North Korea as in
the mall. Perhaps it's business. It's not personal. When somebody
challenges you, that challenger must be eliminated. He's sending a message.
You know, anyone anywhere in the world, I can get
you and it will hurt. If you have the attention
(36:45):
of the world and the world will listen to you,
then yes, North Korea is going to hand you down.
I'm evenly join me next time as we unraveled the
most audacious political assassin nation of the twenty one century
and try to understand the strange logic behind North Korea's policies, paranoia,
(37:08):
and the reasons Kim Jong Nam was a marked man
Until next time. This is Big Brother. Big Brother is
a production of School of Humans and I Heart Radio
and hosted by me Eden Lane. Lucas Riley is our writer,
(37:30):
co director and associate producer. Amelia Brock is our senior producer,
co director and editor. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, ELC. Crowley,
and Jason English. Our fact checker is Aaron Blakemore. Music
composed by Jason Todd Shannon and Tunelauters. Original score mix
by Vick Stafford. Audio editing by Jesse Nice Wanger sound
(37:54):
design and mixed by Harper W. Harris, Audio correction by
Josh Fisher, Boy acting by Mark Chung, Daniel Kim, Judy,
Alice Lee, Sean mckeeth, Mike Coscarelli and Katie Wong. Special
thanks to Ryan Murdoch and Will Pearson. We like to
acknowledge the work of Ryan White, Jessica Hargrave and Doug
(38:15):
Bob Clark. Sam licensed from the Associated Press, The Star
of Malaysia, A Jean France Press, Reuters and Kenny TV.
If you're enjoying the podcast, help us get the word
out by leaving a rating in your favorite podcast app.
Until next time, I'm even Lee School of Humans
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