Kim Jong-nam's loss of favour was thought to have been caused by the Tokyo incident. However, Kim Jong-nam himself claimed that he had fallen out of favour due to advocating for reform. In an email to the editor of the "Tokyo Shimbun", Kim Jong-nam wrote that after being educated in Switzerland, he "insisted on reform and market-opening", leading his father to decide that he had turned "into a capitalist". Kim Jong-nam at this time has also been described as "the closest [North Korea] ever had to an international playboy", and gained a reputation for "gambling and drinking and arranging the occasional business deal". He used to be the only member of the Kim family to ever speak directly to media outside of North Korea, until Kim Jong-un took a question from a foreign journalist during the 2019 North Korea–United States Hanoi Summit.