http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-defector-kim-clapton-idUSKBN15I132?il=0
By James Pearson | SEOUL
Two years ago, Thae Yong Ho, North Korea's former deputy ambassador in London, received an unexpected phone call from the ruling Workers' Party Central Committee in Pyongyang telling him to get ready to receive a very important e-mail.
"Please go to the Albert Hall and buy four tickets," said the cryptic message from a disposable e-mail address designed to throw off Western intelligence agencies.
But the message wasn't code - Thae found out later he was being asked to take leader Kim Jong Un's brother to an Eric Clapton concert.
After receiving the e-mail, Thae said he searched online for upcoming gigs at London's Royal Albert Hall. One caught his eye: "Eric Clapton's 70th Birthday Celebration Tour".
"I realized, 'Ah! It must be Kim Jong Chol! In North Korea who else would be interested but Kim Jong Chol?'".
Not much is known about Kim Jong Chol, the elder brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, except his love for the music of British guitarist Eric Clapton.
Thae, who defected from North Korea to the South last year, said he was charged with escorting Kim around London when he arrived for the concert. In an interview in Seoul on Friday, he described the then 35-year-old as a polite young man who said little about his life back in Pyongyang or the politics of his brother.
"He's very free," said Thae. "But he's only interested in guitars and music".
Video of Kim at the May, 2015 concert showed him clad in a leather jacket and wearing aviator sunglasses with an unknown woman by his side, believed at the time to have been his girlfriend.
"She's not his girlfriend," said Thae. She was a rhythm guitarist from the "Moranbong Band" - a North Korean pop group formed by Kim Jong Un after he took power.
Just like Clapton, Kim Jong Chol is an accomplished lead guitarist and jams regularly with the woman, Thae said.
In the days leading up to Clapton's birthday concert, Thae took Kim to Denmark Street, a street in London's glitzy West End packed with guitar and musical instrument shops.
Kim Jong Chol tried out various guitars in every single one of those shops, Thae said, before settling on one where he bought an armful of pedals and mixers to take back home to Pyongyang.
"The shop owner didn't know it was Kim Jong Chol," said Thae.
"He let him play for 30 minutes. The shopkeepers of those guitar shops were amazed by his talent".
Curious at the mysterious guitarist riffing before them, Thae said several shopkeepers started to talk to the North Korean leader's brother, prying him excitedly with questions like 'What is your name?' and 'Which band are you in?'.
"He didn't say anything," said Thae.
"He just smiled".
Eric Clapton for ambassador to North Korea!
Slowhand is the only hope for peace with Kim Jong Un! Got to go better than Dennis Rodman!
Thought about this when I heard of a brother to Kim Jong Un was poisoned in a Malaysia airport.
But it was another brother, not Kim Jong Chol. Instead it was Kim Jong Nam.
North Korea's Kim Jong Un Spent Five Years Plotting To Kill His Brother
By Cristina Silva @cristymsilva On 02/15/17 AT 6:39 PMNorth Korean leader Kim Jong Un spent five years trying to kill his older brother before Kim Jong Nam died Tuesday after falling ill at a Malaysian airport. South Korea's spy agency said this week North Korea was behind the alleged murder.
Kim Jong Nam, 46, potentially died from a poison attack at an airport terminal in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Kim Jong Nam told medical workers before his death someone had touched his face from behind and attacked him with a chemical spray. Malaysian police said Wednesday officials had arrested a woman at Kuala Lumpur International Airport carrying Vietnamese travel documents in connection to the death.
South Korea's National Intelligence Service Director Lee Byung-ho told lawmakers Kim Jong Un had long wanted his brother killed, but it took years for his assassins to complete the task, Yonhap news agency reported Wednesday. Kim Jong Nam, who at one time was expected to succeed his father before his death in December 2011 and become North Korea's supreme ruler, had been under the Chinese government’s protection.
Kim Jong Name was the half-brother of North Korea's ruler and had said in media interviews that he had no desire to take power. He was aware his brother was trying to kill him and at one point wrote a letter to Kim Jong Un asking him to call off a standing order for his assassination.
"We have nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. We are well aware that the only way to escape is suicide," Kim Jong Nam said in a letter to Kim Jong Un, one of the lawmakers said.
He fall out of favor in North Korea after he tried to enter Japan in 2001 with a false Dominican Republic passport while traveling with his wife and his son. He explained at the time that the family wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland. He later moved to China with his family.
"Because I was educated in the West, I was able to enjoy freedom from early age and I still love being free," he said in notes to a Japanese journalist, Yoji Gomi, who wrote a book on Kim Jong Nam in 2012. "The reason I visit Macau so often is because it's the most free and liberal place near China, where my family lives."
Still, Kim Jong Un was worried his brother would unseat him, especially after a 2012 assassination attempt against Kim Jong Nam apparently didn't work out, Reuters reported.
Related Stories"Kim Jong Un said: 'I just hate him. So get rid of him,'" Kim Byung-kee, a South Korean lawmaker, said.
The two brothers never met under a North Korea tradition that requires potential heirs to be kept seperated.
"I'm his half brother, but I've never met him so I don't know," Kim Jong Nam said in another note to Gomi. "I'm concerned how Jong Un, who merely resembles my grandfather, will be able to satisfy the needs of North Koreans. Kim Jong Un is still just a nominal figure and the members of the power elite will be the ones in actual power. The dynastic succession is a joke to the outside world."
He added: "The Kim Jong Un regime will not last long. Without reforms, North Korea will collapse, and when such changes take place, the regime will collapse."
http://www.ibtimes.com/north-koreas-kim-jong-un-spent-five-years-plotting-kill-his-brother-2492767
