ime denounced it as a “nefarious act and unpardonably heavy crime”.
Joshua Stanton at One Free Korea:
Mun undoubtedly knows many things about where Pyongyang hides his money, and his intelligence value could be inestimable. But the real impact of his extradition was to persuade Kim Jong-un that Malaysia was no longer a safe place for his agents, and to panic him into pulling his people out and cutting diplomatic relations. That will be a significant shock to Kim’s finances, because Malaysia was one of the largest hubs of North Korea’s money laundering operations.
Bad things tend to happen when you slime another country’s airports with nerve agents. The real surprise is that this breach didn’t happen four years ago.
As Stanton notes, this move will have been going on behind the scenes for quite a while, so it shouldn't be taken as some kind of statement of intent on the part of the new Biden administration.
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