▶Follow us on SNS to read more articles
<Facebook> https://www.facebook.com/chosunenglish
<X> https://twitter.com/chosunenglish
“This is a photo of my mother taken at JFK International Airport in the US the day before the Korean Air flight was shot down. She was a strong woman who used to say, ‘No matter what you do, try at least four times’...”
On the 28th of last month, at a cafe in Seoul’s Seocho-gu, Professor Cho Won-cheol (74), an honorary professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering major at Yonsei University, spoke while looking at a faded photo of his mother, Kwon Yeon-geum (then 70 years old). Mrs. Kwon was one of the victims of the “Korean Air (KAL) Flight 007 Shootdown Incident” that occurred in 1983. Professor Cho said, “She came to meet me while I was pursuing a doctoral program in the United States, and she was on her way back home when the tragedy happened,” adding, “I didn’t know that day in New York would be her last forever.”
In the midst of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union (Russia), on the early morning of September 1st, 1983, Korean Air Flight 007, which was flying from New York to Gimpo Airport via Anchorage, inexplicably deviated from its designated route and entered the airspace near Sakhalin. Soviet fighter jets were dispatched, missiles were fired, and the civilian flight 007 was shot down. All 269 people on board, including Koreans, Americans, and Japanese, lost their lives. Due to the uncooperative stance of the Soviet Union, the remains of the victims were not repatriated to their home countries, and only some keepsakes were returned to the families.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the incident, but the exact cause of the crash has yet to be definitively determined. At the time, Flight 007 was 10 minutes off course after departing from Anchorage Airport in the United States. Shortly after the incident, South Korea and the United States initiated an investigation into the cause, but they faced obstacles in accessing the crash site due to the Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union. In 1993, ten years after the incident, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) released a black box analysis report provided by the Soviet Union, which stated that the “pilot operated the aircraft in manual compass mode instead of the automatic inertial navigation system (INS) mode.” The pilot error was emphasized as a contributing factor in the report’s interpretation.
However, some family members raised doubts. Professor Cho stated, “ICAO’s analysis was based solely on the black box provided by the Soviet Union, which was in a rush to downplay the incident. Therefore, it cannot be fully trusted.” He further mentioned, “The pilot in command at the time, Captain Chun Byung-in was a veteran with over 15,400 hours of flight experience, so it’s hard to believe that he would have made such a mistake.”
Shim Jae-gwan (72), who lives in Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul, also lost his mother, Bae Bun-sun (67), in the accident 40 years ago. Bae had traveled to the United States to visit Shim’s sisters, and the accident happened on her way back to Korea. Shim mentioned, “It was hard to believe that my mother, who had worked hard to raise six siblings, disappeared in an instant.” The family members pointed out that the policies of the Chun Doo-hwan administration, including the Eastern Bloc reconciliation policy, and the establishment of diplomatic relations with Russia by the Roh Tae-woo administration (in 1992), made it difficult to uncover the truth behind the incident. Sim stated, “The Chun Doo-hwan government was sensitive about the participation of Soviet and Eastern Bloc countries in the 1988 Seoul Olympics. In line with this, our government provided $1.4 billion in aid to the Soviet Union in 1991.” He further explained, “Naturally, the incident was buried, and the issue of the bombing of Flight 007 was hardly mentioned as a diplomatic problem after establishing relations with Russia.” Just a month after the KAL Flight 007 incident in 1983, North Korea caused the “Rangoon Bombing” incident, shifting national attention to the bomb attack. This also had an impact on diverting public interest away from the incident.
After 40 years since the incident, there has been a generational shift within the families of the victims. The bereaved family association, which used to be primarily led by parents and spouses, are now being replaced by the younger generation, particularly the children of the victims. Yoo Jun-seon (54), who is serving as the third-generation head of the bereaved family association, lost his father, who worked for a construction equipment company, in the accident when he was a 14-year-old boy. Yoo mentioned, “Around 100 people gather in the association, and we’ve done what we could, but the lack of revealing the truth is exhausting,” adding that many want to forget the heart-wrenching memories. “Now, receiving even a small piece of the remains or keepsakes has become our only hope,” Mr. Yoo said.
The families of the victims plan to organize various foreign media reports and the remaining feelings of the families, so that the younger generation can comprehend the situation. Shim stated, “I hope the younger generation remembers that this incident was a great tragedy of the Cold War era,” and he expressed “the wish that the events of that time, which happened within a harsh diplomatic framework for a small country, do not repeat in the future.”
￦7 Billion Earning “Online Messi” Lee Sang-hyeok Aims for Gold Medal
U.S. Next-Generation Nuclear Reactors to be Built with Korean Technology
Film on North Korean Defectors “Beyond Utopia” to Be Screened in 600 U.S. Theaters
