Pyongyang yesterday dismissed as "the height of absurdity" official accounts of the death of Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

A Malaysian court yesterday charged two women with murder, over two weeks after Kim was attacked in public at KL International Airport 2.

Doan Thi Huong, a 29-year-old Vietnamese woman, and Siti Aishah, a 25-year-old from Indonesia, allegedly poisoned Kim by wiping the highly toxic chemical nerve agent VX on his face.

Pyongyang's official media outlet KCNA said it was "the height of absurdity to claim that the person who applied VX - a fatal substance even in case of inhalation of a tiny amount of it or its touch on the skin - was left unaffected and the person to whom it was applied, met a death."

The exposure to VX killed Kim within 15 to 20 minutes, Malaysia's health minister has said. One of the accused women was said to have vomited after the attack.

Malaysian police are searching for a total of seven North Koreans believed to be linked to the killing, including a diplomat at the North Korean embassy in Kuala Lumpur and an airline worker with Air Koryo, the state national airline.

"The US and the South Korean authorities are groundlessly blaming the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea)," KCNA said. Suggestions that North Korea was involved in Kim's death lacked "scientific accuracy and logical coherence," the report said.

The two women charged with the murder were seen leaving the Sepang magistrate's courthouse in handcuffs and wearing bulletproof vests. The charge, if proven, carries a mandatory death sentence.

North Korea and Malaysia are meanwhile engaged in a row over the body of the victim.

Pyongyang sent a diplomatic delegation to Malaysia on Tuesday seeking the release of Kim's body.

Malaysian Health Minister S Subramaniam reiterated at a press conference yesterday that the government would not release Kim's body before it was formally identified.

"We don't have the (DNA) specimen. We only have a dead person and a passport... For us to say this is Kim Jong-nam, we need to get the DNA of the family," he said.

Ri Ton-il, the former North Korean deputy ambassador to the UN who was among the diplomats sent to Kuala Lumpur, said he also intended "to question the arrest of the DPRK citizen" in relation to the case.

Officials have said almost nothing publicly about a North Korean man being held under remand by Malaysian police.

Police asked Interpol to issue an alert for four who fled Malaysia to Pyongyang on the day of Kim's murder. The remaining three are thought to be in Malaysia.

- dpa