Fear Of Kim Jong Un Could Keep Half-Brother's Family From Claiming Body

One month after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's estranged half brother, Kim Jong Nam, was assassinated in Malaysia airport, Malaysia's health minister said Monday that the government will give relatives two to three weeks time to claim the body. After that, if the body is not claimed, it will decide what to do with it, reported the Associated Press.

Although it has been one month but none of the members from Kim Jong Nam's family have come forward to claim the body, which is still kept at a morgue in a Kuala Lumpur hospital, amid assassination fears, as was reported by Yonhap News Agency.

"Now with the positive identification of the body, we are told that he had a wife or wives and children," Health Minister Subramaniam Sathasivam told reporters Monday. "So we hope that those people will respond and come forward to claim the body. In the absence of that, then we will address it as a government ... in trying to find how we are going to take the next step," the Associated Press reported.

Read: Ex-Diplomat Says Kim Jong-Nam's Son May Be North Korea's Next Target

A video of a young man claiming to be Kim Jong Nam's son, had surfaced online last week, from an undisclosed location. He said in the video that he was living with his mother and sister but did not reveal the whereabouts. It indicated that the family fears for their lives and they think that they might get assassinated in a similar manner Kim Jong Nam was.

Just after the assassination, a feud had begun between North Korea and Malaysia, where Pyongyang insisted Malaysia to return the body of Kim Jong Nam and kept objecting to Kim's autopsy while Malaysia refused to do so and kept continuing its investigation. Amid the confusion whether the person assassinated was Kim Jong Nam or Kim Chol —the name on the passport that Kim was carrying when he was attacked — on Friday Malaysian police confirmed that Kim Chol and Kim Jong Nam was the same person. However, it refused to say how they identified Kim, according to the Associated Press.

The relations between the two countries have strained to such an extent where each expelled the other's ambassador. Last Tuesday, North Korea barred Malaysians from leaving the country starting a series of tit-for-tat actions from Malaysia as well. Malaysia, too, then barred North Koreans from exiting its soil.