The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot

by Blaine Harden

  Credit for the idea has also been claimed by an air force psychological warfare unit in Washington. Its chief, Captain Alan K. Abner, said his staff had seen intelligence reports suggesting that younger Russian pilots in Manchuria “felt they were not respected” and were good candidates for defection “if properly motivated.” The plan was to circulate news of a $10,000 reward for a MiG through enemy lines by word of mouth, which would give the American government “a certain advantage of deniability.” Abner says he sent the plan to the Pentagon on a Monday in the fall of 1952 and was “shocked” to see that it had been changed, hyped up, and leaked to the Washington Post the following Saturday, under the headline “General Mark Clark Offers $100,000 for Russian Jet.” Abner and his psychological operations staff felt “disillusionment with the way [their] proposal had been distorted.”

  The reward was made public the day after armistice talks resumed in April 1953. Clark said the timing was intended to vex the enemy and sow suspicion among enemy commanders, which it might have done.

  A month after the first leaflet drop, Kim Il Sung delivered an unusual radio message. He told North Korean pilots to “strengthen their discipline and protect their equipment.” Clark claimed in his memoir that Russian-language broadcasts of the offer were electronically jammed. He also claimed that after Operation Moolah was made public, only “the worst” Communist pilots were allowed to fly.

  “These pilots flew far fewer missions in the last ninety days of the war than in the preceding three months, but American Sabre pilots shot down twice as many,” Clark wrote. “Sabres destroyed 165 MiGs against three friendly combat losses—a record ratio of 55 to one.”

  The last three months of the war were indeed a one-sided American slaughter. Sabre pilots who were veterans of World War II compared the easy pickings to the “Marianas Turkey Shoot,” when Japanese pilots were shot down in extraordinary numbers. But it is unlikely that Operation Moolah had much—if anything—to do with it. An air force analysis found “no positive information” that the cash-for-MiG offer caused “any variation in Communist air activity.”

  As the war wound down, there were no Communist takers for America’s money. As General Clark writes, “After the armistice was signed we forgot all about the offer.”

  No Kum Sok did not read or hear about Operation Moolah. Its leaflets and radio broadcasts never reached him in Manchuria. Commanders in the North Korean and Soviet air forces never mentioned it. Nothing was said about it in the rumor mill on the flight line or during gossipy dinners with Russian pilots. What General Clark described as “our most spectacular psychological warfare exploit” meant absolutely nothing in No’s world—or so it seemed.

  CHAPTER 10

  Uncle Yoo

  I

  After Stalin died, Uncle Yoo paid a surprise visit to his nephew’s air base in Manchuria.

  He was now Major Yoo, leader of a supply regiment in the North Korean air force. He had had a relatively good war. He was healthy, as was his wife, as were three of his four children. (American bombing killed his fourth child.) He stayed in his hometown of Hungnam when the war started, working as a supervisor in a factory there until the city was overrun in late 1950 by UN forces. Unlike many North Koreans whose political loyalties swung back and forth with invading and withdrawing armies, Yoo remained true to his Great Leader, joining guerrillas fighting against the Americans and the South Koreans. When the Chinese pushed UN forces south in early 1951, Yoo joined the air force and began rising as an officer.

  He visited his nephew at Dongfeng airfield, a base about fifty miles north of the Korean border. In the months before No Kum Sok’s uncle showed up, his morale had hit rock bottom. He had been passed over for promotion to battalion commander. The officer who got the job, No believed, was a poor pilot and an inferior orator at party meetings. No’s pride was hurt, and the urgency of his desire to defect had grown.

  All the while, the risks of dying in a MiG were rising. Sabres were everywhere, and No’s commanders were increasingly inept. On March 21, 1953, they encouraged him and fifteen other MiG pilots to fly head-on into a trap. At thirty-three thousand feet over the Yalu, a clear blue sky was streaked with chalky vapor trails from a swarm of fighter jets flying at higher altitude. No’s regimental commander radioed for help. Were they friend or foe? he asked.

  “Don’t worry about them,” replied ground control, adding that they were either Russian or Chinese MiGs. “Keep climbing.”

  The fighters were Sabres, and No’s unit flew up into an ambush. One of No’s friends, Lieutenant Kim Lee Joo, was hit and lost control of his MiG. He shouted over the radio that his ejection seat had failed. No watched him free himself from the cockpit. His parachute failed to open.

  As North Korean losses increased, as American pilots became more aggressive in picking off MiGs in Manchuria, North Korean air force commanders began telling increasingly ludicrous untruths about success in the air war. After a day in which Sabres shot down several MiGs, No heard General Wang Yong, the air force commander, announce with joyous enthusiasm that another five or six Sabres had been destroyed. No’s regimental commander, Colonel Tae Kuk Sung, claimed to have shot down two Sabres in one dogfight, which brought his claimed total of American kills to five and made him an ace. For his achievements, Tae was personally congratulated by Kim Il Sung and given a hero’s medal in Pyongyang. Five red stars were painted on his MiG. No believed Tae was a liar. He had flown with the colonel on the day he supposedly became an ace, and no Sabres were shot down.

  The visit with Uncle Yoo was brief, lasting no more than a few minutes. But for a despondent young pilot who had not heard anything about his family for years, the conversation was emotionally crushing—and confusing. No’s mother was dead, Yoo said, killed in an American bombing. Yet he was vague about the details. No suspected Yoo was lying and wondered why he would do that about something so painful.

  No would never see Uncle Yoo again. But before the summer of 1953 was over, he would learn that his uncle had indeed lied to him.

  A week before the war ended, No Kum Sok joined hundreds of North Korean pilots and mechanics at Dandong airfield to listen to a speech that explained the terms of the armistice that would go into effect at midnight on July 27, 1953.

  Once the truce began, it would be illegal to bring weapons or soldiers back into North Korea, said General Kim Han Jun, the top political commander of the North Korean air force. So everything—the entire air force and all its aircraft—had to be moved across the border before then. The general said it would be sent to Uiju, the airfield where No was nearly killed by Sabre strafing in the fall of 1951. The Chinese were again repairing the runway there and making it ready for returning MiGs.

  No waited respectfully until General Kim had finished speaking, then asked a question: “What about night raids before the truce goes into effect? Won’t they destroy our MiGs on the ground?”

  The general said they would probably try but that the “Soviet Union can always supply us with more MiGs.”

  The general also made it clear to No and the other airmen that North Korea intended to cheat on the terms of the armistice in every possible way. “The border between China and Korea is long and the Neutral Commission cannot be everywhere,” the general said, referring to the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission, which had been created during truce talks and had ten mobile teams from Sweden, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, and Poland patrolling the borders.

  For the next four days, No and five other pilots shuttled two dozen MiGs from Dandong to Uiju, returning each time on a truck. As soon as a MiG landed, it was pushed south into nearby hills and covered with camouflage. Soon, though, the Americans spotted the transfers. In what one U.S. Air Force general described as a final “blaze of glory,” waves of bombers dropped five-hundred-pound bombs on Uiju and six other North Korean airfields.

  With the truce fast approaching and North Korea’s stra
tegy switching from fighting the war to cheating the peace, No began to believe his dogfighting days were done. He had survived more than a hundred combat missions during which he encountered American fighters. He did not want to press his luck. In the final days of a war he despised, he feared being the last pilot to die.

  Yet on July 24, three days before the truce, he and fifteen other pilots were ordered to climb into the cockpits of MiGs parked at the Dandong runway and start their engines. Scanning the sky before takeoff, No saw six Sabres at low altitude above the airfield. He had never felt more vulnerable.

  The MiGs took off two by two, with No flying as wingman to Captain Kim Jung Sup, his battalion’s vice-commander. As wingman, No’s responsibility was to stick with Captain Kim throughout the mission and guard his back. Seconds after takeoff, Captain Kim announced a problem.

  “My landing gear is not retracting,” he shouted over the radio to ground control. “What shall I do?”

  Before ground control could answer, No jumped at the chance to save his skin—and Captain Kim’s.

  “If your landing gear is not retracting,” No said over the radio, “get down and land at once!”

  Captain Kim returned to base and landed safely, with No, his relieved wingman, following him down. They taxied off the runway as the other fourteen MiGs climbed up into the jaws of a Sabre attack.

  As No turned his MiG over to mechanics, he saw two fighters—a Sabre chasing a MiG—hurtling toward the airfield. When the American opened fire, No saw tracers tear open the fuselage of the MiG. Its pilot was Lieutenant Su Chul Ha, who had been No’s teenage classmate at Hungnam Chemical College and had traveled by train with him to enroll at the naval academy, then to Manchuria for flight training.

  The badly damaged MiG flew too low for Su to eject. He tried to crash-land on the runway but overshot it. As the Sabre pulled up and away, the MiG exploded in a ball of orange flames. No felt the heat on his face. Su Chul Ha was the last MiG pilot killed in the Korean War.

  With two days left in the war and the Americans still bombing airfields, the North Korean air force decided it would be wiser to dismantle its MiGs, put them in crates, and transport them across the Yalu in barges. Then they could be reassembled in North Korea after the truce forced the Americans to stop dropping bombs. As the armistice began on the night of July 27, No crossed the river in a barge carrying five crated MiGs. It docked about nine hours after the truce deadline. MiGs in crates would continue to arrive in North Korea—in violation of the truce—for several months.

  After the armistice, there was no housing for pilots near Uiju’s bomb-shattered airport, so the air force found barracks for them in nearby Uiju town, which had been spared from American carpet bombing. A couple of days after No arrived, he discovered he had family in the town. Out walking on a dirt road, he encountered his aunt, Ko Kye Sook, his mother’s sister and the wife of his Uncle Yoo.

  No had wanted to avoid her and her entire family, but having seen her in the road, he had no choice except to say hello and act polite. After his uncle’s disturbing visit to his air base in Manchuria in the spring, he had received a letter from his fourteen-year-old cousin, Yoo San Yeol, the eldest son of his aunt and uncle. The letter said—just as Uncle Yoo had said back in March—that No’s mother was dead, killed in the war. It did not explain how or when; No believed his uncle was behind the letter.

  Aunt Ko seemed delighted—and overwhelmed—to see her nephew. She cried about the many North Korean airplanes that had come crashing down in flames during the war and how she had worried that No had been burned to death in one of them. With the war ended, she told him, he should find a nice girl to marry and have some children. She offered to help him find a wife and invited him to her house for supper.

  No felt ill—and trapped. But he did not want to be rude, so he accepted her invitation. After returning to his barracks to fetch chocolate bars for her three sons, he walked over to the house the government had given his aunt and uncle. Uncle Yoo was away, apparently on air force business.

  As soon as No arrived, his aunt began cooking—and talking. Her eldest son, the one who had written the letter, said nothing. The two younger cousins were also silent.

  The war—and her fanatical husband—had transformed Aunt Ko into an emotionally committed Communist. At considerable length, she criticized the members of No’s extended family who were not Reds. No interrupted her to ask how his mother had died.

  “Your mother is not dead,” she replied. “She went to South Korea.”

  Before No could reply, his aunt criticized his mother for abandoning Kim Il Sung.

  “Why would she want to go to South Korea?” his aunt asked.

  No was not completely surprised to learn that his mother was alive, because he had suspected his uncle and cousin lied to him.

  “How did she reach the South?” he asked.

  “Don’t ask me that kind of question,” his aunt said. “Just believe me. She is there.”

  No asked why Uncle Yoo had lied.

  “He did not want you to worry about your mother,” she said.

  Disgusted and depressed, No returned to his barracks, where he was in for an even greater shock.

  “Since you have visited your aunt, you now know the whereabouts of your mother,” said Lee Kun Il, a chief weaponry pilot and a comrade of No’s since their days at the naval academy.

  No’s world was spinning out of control. Somehow, this pilot knew where No’s mother had gone. No suspected that Uncle Yoo, perhaps while visiting the air base in Manchuria, had spread word that No’s mother was a traitor living in South Korea. If so, in a country that enforced collective guilt, No was now at risk.

  “My mother is dead,” No said coldly.

  More than ever, he hated the police state that surrounded him. He needed to escape and find his mother.

  As No later learned, she had found her way to South Korea thanks to a North Korean army truck and a U.S. Navy boat lift. Shortly before the outbreak of war, as she was walking on a road near her home in Hungnam, the truck hit her and badly injured her leg. The driver stopped and took her to a hospital in Hungnam, where she remained a patient as UN troops stormed north in the fall of 1950 and occupied the port city.

  By December of that year, Chinese troops were forcing their way into the city. American and South Korean soldiers were ordered to flee by ship. Before leaving, as the U.S. Army X Corps blew up the city’s infrastructure, the U.S. Navy organized a “Christmas Evacuation” of ninety-one thousand North Korean refugees.

  A hundred thousand would-be refugees were left behind on the docks. But on crutches and with the help of friends, No’s mother squeezed aboard the last navy ship to leave Hungnam.

  II

  When Kim Il Sung’s war was finally over and his country lay in ruins, he turned catastrophe at home into leverage over fraternal Communist countries. He expertly milked the Soviet Union, China, and the Communist Eastern bloc for aid that would rebuild North Korea and secure his dictatorship for generations to come. In the process, he demonstrated, yet again, a genius for gathering strength from failure.

  Kim never paid a price for the prewar judgments and wartime strategies that beggared and killed his people. His phoenixlike rebirth after the war was nothing short of astounding. But it would not have been possible without the unwitting assistance of the United States and the unbridled passion of air force generals for dropping bombs and napalm on civilian targets. Three years of American saturation bombing generated revulsion and outrage in socialist countries. By burning down cities, blowing up irrigation dams, and laying waste to the capacity of North Koreans to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves, the United States made Kim and his government seem pitiable and deserving—at least as seen from Moscow, Beijing, and other Communist capitals.

  The Great Leader exploited this sympathy for all it was worth, demanding that the Soviet Union,
China, and Eastern Europe pay to reconstruct what the Americans had razed. It helped immensely that Stalin—the principal prolonger of the war and of North Korea’s suffering—had died. It also helped that new leaders in Moscow were rushing to undo Stalin’s excesses.

  Kim shrewdly played to the post-Stalinist zeitgeist.

  “[He] believed his allies owed him whatever was required to rebuild his country, since much of the destruction had resulted from their insistence on continuing the war for the benefit of the entire socialist camp,” according to the historian Kathryn Weathersby. “The Korean War left Moscow, Beijing, and the other fraternal states with a badly damaged, resentful ally they were compelled to support.”

  Kim’s demands produced a singularly generous moment in the history of global Communism. North Korea vacuumed up more short- and long-term aid from socialist countries than any country before or since. In what became known as the “North Korean miracle,” economic growth expanded rapidly for more than a decade and remained ahead of South Korea’s until the early 1970s. Much less publicized was Kim’s decision in the late 1950s to build a gulag of political prison camps to eliminate his perceived enemies and scare potential malcontents into silence.

  The reconstruction “miracle” would have been impossible without buckets of other people’s money: several decades of fraternal aid, credits, expertise, and hardware, most of which was never repaid.

  For the size of its economy, China was inordinately generous. Thirty-four divisions of the Chinese army stayed on in North Korea for five years after the war ended, providing free labor for reconstruction projects. China’s no-strings aid to the North in 1954 amounted to more than 3 percent of its annual budget—and was a third more than the combined aid that year from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. A few months after the war ended, Mao, who viewed Kim as an egotist and a second-rater, explained at a Beijing banquet in Kim’s honor why the North deserved so much help: “The Korean people are brave. They can handle suffering. [They are] courageous, disciplined, not afraid of hardship. They have paid a heavy price in both manpower and material, but the result of their struggle has greatly aided us . . . Had the enemy not been beaten back away from the Yalu River, China’s development would not be secure.”