TOKYO — North Korea has sent a high-ranking diplomat to Malaysia to try to secure the remains of Kim Jong Nam, the half brother of the North Korean leader who was killed in a chemical weapon poisoning earlier this month.
Malaysian police, meanwhile, said they would press murder charges against the two women accused of carrying out the attack and seek the death penalty as punishment.
The astonishing assassination of Kim Jong Nam — with a weapon of mass destruction at a busy airport — has raised questions about the North’s role in plotting the killing and has strained Pyongyang’s relations with its few friends in the world.
As one North Korean delegation arrived in Kuala Lumpur, another landed in Beijing, just days after the Chinese government imposed a potentially devastating coal ban on North Korea. Pyongyang responded by accusing its closest ally of ‘‘dancing to the tune of the US.’’
Kim Jong Nam, the estranged older half brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, was killed in the attack with VX, an internationally banned nerve agent, in the budget airline terminal of Kuala Lumpur airport on Feb. 13.
South Korea has directly accused Kim Jong Un of ordering a ‘‘terrorist’’ attack to remove a potential rival, and Yun Byung-se, the South’s foreign minister, called for North Korea to be expelled from the United Nations.
‘‘Now is the time, I believe, for us to seriously consider taking more fundamental measures on their membership in relevant regional and international forums including the UN,’’ he told a conference in Geneva on Tuesday, according to the Yonhap News Agency.
Arriving in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday, Ri Tong Il, a former North Korean ambassador to the United Nations, said he was seeking to discuss the ‘‘humanitarian issue’’ of the return of the body as well as the release of a North Korean scientist arrested in connection with the murder.
Malaysia says it will not release the body without DNA identification, but no family member has come forward to provide it. North Korea has not admitted that the body belongs to Kim Jong Nam, simply referring to him as a North Korea citizen on a diplomatic passport.
