Wikipedia’s great, but I’m disappointed by it in one crucial regard:
There is no standalone article regarding Kim Jong-nam’s attempted 2001 visit to Tokyo Disneyland.
Kim Jong-nam was the first known son of Kim Jong-il, who was the longtime Batshit King of North Korea. Kim Jong-nam born of an affair between Kim Jong-il and Song Hye-rim, an actress. Kim Jong-nam was born in 1971 and kept secret until…well, this is part of the problem. If there was a Wikipedia article about the Tokyo Disneyland incident, we might have some gaps filled in. Instead, what we know is that Kim Jong-nam was making secret trips to Japan starting possibly at the age of 24. Why? Again, unclear. I hope they were to go to Tokyo Disneyland, I hope Kim Jong-nam absolutely loved Tokyo Disneyland, I hope Kim Jong-nam was repeatedly sneaking out of his country to go to Tokyo Disneyland. But did Kim Jong-nam ever even get to Tokyo Disneyland? Wikipedia won’t tell me, and the relevant source appears to be a book, which is a problem because I am banned from all three of bookstores, libraries, and making purchases on The Internet™. It’s either steal the book from one of those breweries that has bookshelves, make a deal in the storm sewer again, or read about the whole thing on Wikipedia. I would vastly prefer the last of those three. I hate committing theft.
What Wikipedia does say is that in 1998, around the age of 27, Kim Jong-nam was reportedly installed as the head of the North Korean Computer Committee (an IT job) and was viewed as a likely future Batshit King. Then…
“In May 2001, Kim Jong-nam was arrested in Japan on arrival at Narita International Airport, accompanied by two women and a four-year-old boy identified as his son. He was travelling on a forged Dominican Passport using a Chinese alias, Pang Xiong (胖熊; ‘fat bear’). After being detained, he was deported to China, where he said he was travelling to Japan to visit Tokyo Disneyland. The incident caused his father to cancel a planned visit to China due to the embarrassment it caused him.”
Ugh.
Poor Kim Jong-nam.
Was he just wanting to go to Tokyo Disneyland? Did he really want his son to get to enjoy Tokyo Disneyland? Did he want his son to enjoy Tokyo Disneyland because he himself loved it so much? We don’t know. There’s no Wikipedia article dedicated to the incident. There’s only those 82 words and…four Chinese characters? I think that’s what those are. Context clues.
After the arrest, Kim Jong-nam fell out of favor. The prevailing thought is that he fell out of favor because of the arrest, but he claimed it was because he was advocating reforms, which…I would also claim I was advocating reforms if I was exiled from North Korea and people thought it was because of my failed attempt to sneak into Tokyo Disneyland. But, you know, maybe a little bit of both. What I do wonder is what the specific source of embarrassment was for Kim Jong-il. Was it that his son was a Disney adult? Was it that his son botched an attempt to sneak into a foreign adversary’s territory? Was it that North Koreans couldn’t visit Tokyo Disneyland because of his failing Batshit Regime?
Kim Jong-nam’s life sounds alternatively fun and not fun from there. He lived in Macau, mostly, but traveled often to Europe and was reportedly a CIA source. All of which sound enjoyable. On the other hand, he was repeatedly subject to assassination attempts, which do not sound enjoyable, and in 2017, one of those succeeded. He was killed by nerve agent at the airport in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. That assassination sounds wild, too (yes I know all assassinations should be wild, but hear me out). Everything at airports with this guy was wild. With the assassination, four North Korean suspects successfully left afterwards, but an Indonesian woman and a Vietnamese woman were arrested and said they thought they were participating in a TV prank. From the BBC:
“The two women have said they were innocent victims of an elaborate North Korean plot.
According to their lawyers, in the days before Mr Kim’s death the women had been paid to take part in pranks where they wiped liquid on people at airports, hotels and shopping malls.”
The assassination happened when two women walked up to Kim Jong-nam and one put her hands on his face.
There were nerve agents on those hands.
Kim Jong-nam had the weirdest life. Weird death, too. I hope he eventually made it to Disneyland. Even if it wasn’t the Tokyo one. If Heaven’s real and he made it, maybe his is Tokyo Disneyland. With nary a forged Dominican passport calling him ‘Fat Bear’ to be found.
Oh my