I agree with those who say he could not have been all that been all that big an asset.
If he’s not an asset, saying so is enough to scare the shit out of big Kim.
Pulling off a coup in a place like NK is virtually impossible. Maybe if one or more are willing to commit suicide in the process of killing off Kim. Kim has a praetorian guard.
Trump may have told Kim about his bro.
The other thing here, of course, is that a public assassination like this will scare the crap out of anyone in Kim’s range of vision who is even thinking about considering the possibility of becoming an asset.
Or, as we absolutely KNOW happened during the Trump meeting in the Oval Office with Kysliav and Lavrov, where Trump blabbed highly classified information from his Briefings (ones he chose to attend) in order to ingratiate himself and impress and kiss the Asses of his Russian Masters, and in doing so, exposed an Israeli intelligence asset whose Government had shared information with the USA (something about a Russian airplane destroying bomb in a laptop if my aging memory serves), maybe he just blabbed to impress his buddy KJU, whom he and Putin were desperate to use for some, any diplomatic achievement to claim for Trump’s credit, and NK was able to figure out who the source might conceivably be.
So, the murder of his half brother goes from evil, brutal, paranoid, and crazy to just evil and brutal.
Whacking a (half) sibling seems crazy, but not when he’s a CIA asset.