Indonesia Offers to Roll Out the Red Carpet for North Korea's Kim Jong Un While Siti Aisyah Sits In Jail

This is a story about two people, separated by more than 4,600 kilometers, but bonded by a single man. It's a story about a murder, about justice, and a surprise shot at redemption. This is a story about Kim Jong Un, North Korea's brutal dictator, and Siti Aisyah, an Indonesian migrant worker currently standing trial for her role in the assassination of the man who connects the two—Kim's half-brother Kim Jong Nam. And none of it makes any sense.

So, Kim is on something of a charm offensive these days after his historic sit-down with US President Donald Trump a Singapore's amusement park and resort island Sentosa. The North Korean dictator, only recently seen as an international pariah, got to play tourist in Singapore, snapping selfies outside the Marina Bay Sands, a building so iconic that it's begging to be the setting of an alien invasion in the next Marvel movie.

Kim then took a victory lap before the foreign press by visiting China for the third time in the same month before returning home.

Watch: Binge Watching North Korean TV Is Surreal — And Educational

Now, President Joko Widodo wants his turn with Kim, extending an official invitation to the upcoming Asian Games, where both North and South Korea plan to field unified teams in three events—dragon boat racing, basketball, and rowing. The government is still waiting on the RSVP, but if both Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae In actually show up, it will be the first time the two leaders meet in public outside the Korean Peninsula.

"We don’t have any confirmation to whether they’re actually coming, but Indonesia will be happy to have the them," Vice President Jusuf Kalla told local media.

Indonesia and North Korea have always enjoyed a cozier relationship than most. The country's founding father Kim Il Sung was friends with Indonesia's own founder Sukarno. The two were so close that Sukarno even named an orchid after him at the Bogor Botanical Gardens. Fast-forward a few decades, a few generations, and a few threats of nuclear war, and Kim Il Sung's grandson is currently enjoying a level of popularity the Kims haven't seen in decades.

But none of this changes the fact that Kim is the head of brutal regime in charge of a country with one of the worst human rights records on Earth. Critics and potential defectors are routinely jailed in harsh gulag-style prisons where they face starvation, freezing conditions, and even death. Recent estimates place North Korea's prison population at some 100,000. Some of the jail-able offenses included listening to foreign music. Some of the punishments allegedly included watching your own baby die.

If this sounds extreme it's probably because it is. But it's also probably because we're so used to hearing about even more batshit crazy stuff (allegedly) happening in the "hermit kingdom." In some instances, these crazy stories aren't actually true, like when, for example, newspapers carried claims that Kim fed his uncle to a pack of hungry dogs. Turns out that story was first posted by a well-known satirical account in China.

But that stuff about mothers being forced to watch their babies being murdered? That's from a report by the US Department of State, so it probably carries a bit more weight than, say, a story about Kim's "invisible" phones.

Then there's the other elephant in the room—the assassination of Kim's half-brother Kim Jong Nam. One of the two women currently standing trial for the man's death is Indonesian citizen Siti Aisyha, a woman who was seen on camera with a partner rubbing deadly VX nerve agent onto Kim Jong Nam's face.

But Siti told the courts that she was duped into killing Kim Jong Nam by North Korean spies who convinced her it was all part of an elaborate TV prank show. Her parents previously told VICE News that they stand by their daughter's claims. Even the Indonesian Attorney General, H.M. Prasetyo, believes that Siti is innocent, but admitted that there is little Indonesia can do. The case has already made its way through the Malaysian justice system, where a trial that's been slammed as "shoddy," and "lopsided," restarted once again a few weeks ago.

Indonesia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs even once claimed to have seen evidence that points to Siti's innocence, but it still kept its distance from the case, writing in a 2017 report, "We don’t mean to interfere with the ongoing legal process, but the government has obtained information and pieces of evidence related to the case and therefore believe that Siti Aisyah isn’t a part of the alleged assassination."

Watch: Family of Accused Killer of Kim Jong Un's Half Brother Speaks Out

And therein lies the dark irony. Siti, a vulnerable woman who is believed to be innocent by multiple people in the Indonesian government, continues to stand trial in a case that could end with both of the accused are sentenced to death, while Kim, a dictator who routinely threatened his closest neighbor with total annihilation, is being welcomed with open arms. To make matters even worse, Kim is believed to have ordered the assassination of his half-brother, putting into motion the very plot that has Siti currently ensnared in a capital case.

It's a dark sequence of coincidences that ends with justice on no sides. I reached out to Teuku Rezasyah, an expert on international relations from Padjajaran University, to try to figure out why Jokowi is trying to get so close to Kim and was told that Indonesia, as a policy, tries to keep to itself in matters like this.

“Indonesia has to be neutral in the Cold War,” Teuku told me. “We have to support the attempts at peace made by the West and North Korea. We can't say things because we might make things worse."

And there's other benefits to meeting the North Korean leader as well, Teuku explained.

“If the plan goes well at the Asian Games, it could benefit both countries,” he said. “Besides strengthening our bilateral relationship in many aspects, Indonesia can also initiate dialogues among high level officials regarding Siti’s case.”

But dialogues with who and about what? Siti is currently standing trial in Malaysia, not North Korea. And neither of those two countries are on the friendliest of terms after Kim Jong Nam was assassinated in the middle of an international airport, in plain view of the public, in the middle of Malaysia's largest city.

In the end, it may be little more than a press op for Jokowi and his administration, a chance to get a bit closer to history in the making. But at what cost?