SEOUL • Mr Kim Jong Nam, the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, could have been found and killed because of the discovery of what looks like his Facebook page, said an independent news website.

Mr Kim Jong Nam, who was assassinated at Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 on Monday, was travelling using a passport under the name of "Kim Chol", according to Malaysian police.

NK News, which describes itself as a specialist information source focused on North Korea, reported that a Facebook account belonging to a "Kim Chol" had pictures of Mr Kim Jong Nam in Macau, where he lived in exile and was headed to before he was killed. It quoted an unnamed source confirming that the profile was his.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency said the Facebook account presumably belonging to Mr Kim Jong Nam has only 13 photos that can be publicly seen and lists 164 friends - but these do not include the name of his son Mr Kim Han Sol, who is said to be under Chinese protection.

Mr Kim Jong Nam's activities on his Facebook page seemed to show that he still used social media even though he was in danger, NK News reported.

It also quoted Mr Cha Du Hyeogn, former intelligence secretary to former South Korean president Lee Myung Bak, as saying that Mr Kim Jong Nam was known to have used commercial e-mail addresses. "Open activities like these do not look like they are coming from a person who is constantly under death threats," he said. "I think it is possible that Kim (Jong Nam) was careless, leading to his unsuspecting death," he told the news site.