Kim Jong Un’s nephew was taken into protective custody by the CIA just days after his dad was murdered with a nerve agent, according to a report.
Kim Han-sol, 25, sought the help of a Free Joseon, a group of “freedom fighters” aiming to bring down Un’s “evil” North Korean dictatorship, just days after his father was assassinated at a crowded airport terminal in Kuala Lumpur in 2017, the group told the New Yorker.
Han-sol was considered by many to be the rightful heir of the former Great Leader, his grandfather Kim Jong Il, and capturing him dead or alive would be a “zero-sum game,” the group told the magazine.
Free Joseon’s New York-based leader Adrian Hong also said he had “never met a kid with so much money,” because Han-sol’s father — the estranged half-brother of the Hermit Kingdom’s despot — had “stashed away a lot of cash during his life.”
Han-sol fled Macau with his mother and teenage sister after noticing that their police guard disappeared after the murder of his father, the report said.
The family then spent a full day in an airport lounge in the Taiwanese capital, Taipei, with a Free Joseon agent who tried to negotiate with at least three countries to take them in.
When they finally arranged a flight to the Netherlands, the ticket agent refused to let them board — and hours later, they were confronted by two men who identified themselves as CIA officers, the New Yorker reported.
South Koreans watch a news briefing with video footage of a man who claims he is Kim Han-sol.Getty ImagesThe agents insisted on joining Han-sol and his family when it finally got a flight to Amsterdam — yet they never arrived at the other end, Free Joseon said.
The last known sighting of him was a short video that the freedom-fighter group took of him thanking them for their help just before he boarded the flight.
Multiple sources told the New Yorker that the agents took Han-sol and his family elsewhere. It was not clear if that was in the Netherlands or another country altogether, author Suki Kim wrote.
“I assume [Free Joseon] lost Han Sol to the CIA,” Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA officer and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the New Yorker.
The CIA refused to comment to the New Yorker about the story.
