North Korean ex-envoy on Kim Jong-un’s ‘decapitation’ fears after Maduro’s capture

The dramatic US operation that overthrew Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro this month may have left North Korean leader Kim Jong-un feeling he was also vulnerable to “decapitation”, according to a former Pyongyang envoy to Havana. In a wide-ranging interview, Lee Il-kyu, who served as Pyongyang’s political counsellor in Cuba from 2019 until 2023, said Washington’s lightning extraction in Caracas was a worst-case scenario for his former boss. “Kim must have felt that a so-called decapitation operation...