The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper The Spokesman-Review
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883
Current Temperature
33°F
Current Conditions
Mist
View complete weather report

Color Scheme

Subscribe now

North Korean Fighter Pilot Flies To Freedom Air Force Captain’s Defection To South Seen As Sign Of Unrest

Washington Post

A North Korean MiG-19 fighter pilot defected to South Korea Thursday with a daring flight across one of the world’s most heavily armed borders that set off air raid sirens near Seoul.

“I couldn’t live under the North Korean system anymore,” Capt. Lee Chul Soo, 30, said on live television after he landed at a military base south of Seoul, escorted by South Korean air force jets.

Thursday’s defection, which sent shudders through Seoul, was the most dramatic of hundreds in recent years and the first by a pilot since 1983.

It added weight to speculation that dissatisfaction and unrest are growing in North Korea and that the demise of the world’s last Stalinist state may not be far off.

North Korea, increasingly isolated and impoverished, is so short of food, electricity and cash that many American military leaders say the question is not whether it will collapse, but when. The Soviet-designed MiG, a model dating from the early 1960s, illustrates how outdated the North Korean war machine has become, said Jim Coles, spokesman for the U.S. military in Seoul.

Coles said the North Koreans have about 750 fighter jets, a few of them relatively modern but most of them MiGs with technology dating back as far as the 1950s. In a war, they would be pitted against South Korea’s much more modern U.S.-built jet fighters, including the F-16, among the most advanced in the world. The U.S. military also has about 100 F-16s based in South Korea; none were involved in Thursday’s activity.

Thursday’s blaring sirens in cities west of Seoul and live national television news coverage began shortly after South Korean military radar spotted the North Korean jet near unauthorized air space about 10:50 a.m.

The pilot had left a military base in western North Korea and was flying over the Yellow Sea toward South Korea. President Kim Young Sam ordered an investigation Thursday night into why air raid sirens in Seoul failed to sound during the incident.