Fatal female assassins

North Korean female assassins, armed with good looks and poison tools, are now the weapon of choice for a ruthless regime stalking its opponents, a high-profile defector told AFP yesterday, after the latest apparent assassination.

Hardy male agents wielding guns or knives have been ditched in favour of their female counterparts, who strike fear into the hearts of enemies, said An Chan-Il, a North Korean defector and renowned critic of Pyongyang's one-man rule.

"We are always mindful of young women accosting us for possible revenge killings," An said.

His comments come days after the half-brother of the North's leader Kim Jong-Un died in a spy novel-style assassination that Seoul said was carried out by Pyongyang agents.

South Korean intelligence chiefs believe Kim Jong-Nam had toxins sprayed in his face as he walked through Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Two women have been arrested over the murder.

An, a former North Korean commando who defected to the South in 1979, is now a leading researcher on North Korean affairs, and a harsh critic of the Stalinist state.

He is one of eight defectors who were given the highest degree of protection by the South. Following Jong-Nam's death, that number has increased to 20, he said.

Malaysia will return the body of the half-brother of North Korea's leader, the country's deputy prime minister said yesterday, as police probing the airport assassination quizzed three suspects.

North Korea has made no comment on the killing, but its diplomats objected to an autopsy Malaysian investigators carried out, a senior official said.

A woman with an Indonesian passport was taken into custody overnight after her 26-year-old Malaysian boyfriend Muhammad Farid Bin Jalaluddin was arrested, police statements said.

The pair were being questioned along with a 28-year-old woman with a Vietnamese travel document detained on Wednesday by detectives trying to get to the bottom of the murder of the estranged playboy brother of Kim Jong-Un.

The portly 45-year-old Jong-Nam had some kind of liquid sprayed in his face after being set upon by two women, Malaysian police have said.

He was rushed to hospital suffering from a seizure, but was dead before he got there.

CCTV images that emerged in Malaysian media, purportedly of one of the suspects, showed an Asian woman wearing a white top with the letters "LOL" emblazoned on the front.

Officers had obtained a seven-day remand order for the first suspect, named as Doan Thi Huong, and for 25-year-old Indonesian passport holder Siti Aishah, Selangor state police chief Abdul Samah Mat told AFP.