Malaysia said Tuesday that the body of Kim Jong-Nam has been embalmed to stop it decomposing, as it lies unclaimed in a Kuala Lumpur morgue a month after his assassination. Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi also announced the deportation of 50 North Korean workers in an apparent exception to a departure ban imposed after the killing of the half-brother of North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Un.
The assassination, carried out with VX nerve agent at Malaysia's main airport, triggered an angry standoff between Kuala Lumpur and Pyongyang that has seen them expel each other's ambassadors and refuse to let their citizens leave.
Pyongyang, which has never confirmed Kim's identity, has repeatedly demanded the return of his body but Malaysian authorities have refused to release it without a DNA sample from next-of-kin.
The body, currently kept in a morgue in the capital, has been embalmed to prevent it from decomposing more than a month after the assassination, Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said.
"It's an effort to preserve the body, because if it is kept in the mortuary it might decompose," he told reporters.
A senior official close to the investigation told AFP that the body would either need to be stored at very low temperatures or embalmed by a professional undertaker to keep it from decomposing.
In the case of ongoing investigations, however, bodies must usually be kept at higher temperatures so they don't turn to ice.
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