It looks like a perfectly staged assassination, straight out of the pages of a spy novel: Kim Jong Nam, the estranged, exiled half brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, falls ill at a Malaysian airport, complains of being sprayed with some sort of chemical, and drops dead. A look at what officials are trying to piece together as they work to reconstruct what appears to be one of the most audacious, mysterious assassinations in recent Asian history: Kim Jong Nam, a jovial, overweight gambler and playboy, had embarrassed Pyongyang before – he tried to sneak into Tokyo Disneyland; he criticized his half brother – but he’s been generally seen more as an annoyance than an existential threat to North Korea’s stability.