The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot

by Blaine Harden

  After lunch, the two men walked to a nearby river, took a swim, and swapped stories about the miseries of cadet life at the naval academy. No was talkative but careful. Han was more careerist than Communist, but he was a known liar who would have relished the chance to snitch. No did not intend to tell anyone else about his plans.

  On his way back to the airfield, No noticed an elderly woman arguing with a merchant who was selling toiletries out of the back of a wagon. The old woman reminded him of his grandmother, who was killed by an American bomb. The woman noticed No’s stare and, after losing her argument with the merchant, approached the pilot. The merchant would not take her cash, she complained, because the bills were old and soiled. No had a pocketful of crisp paper money that he would never need. He gave her 5,000 won (worth about $10). She thanked him profusely, begged to know his name, and tried to give him her tattered currency in exchange. He waved off the money, telling her to spend it somewhere else.

  That night, inside the stone church near the runway, No ate what he intended to be his last meal in North Korea. Meat, vegetables, rice, and tea—all excellent. Along with fifty other officers, he bedded down in the church’s sanctuary and surprised himself by sleeping well.

  On Monday, September 21, the weather across the Korean Peninsula was perfect for flying, a clear, cool autumn morning with a moderate wind out of the north. No needed good weather. He did not know how to take off or land using instruments. He had never landed on a runway blanketed in fog.

  Dressed in his blue flight suit, newly shined boots, and leather jacket, he skipped breakfast and walked out to the runway, carrying his leather flight helmet. There, he was startled to see General Lee Whal, vice-commander of the North Korean air force.

  Lee was an odd duck among North Korean generals, and not just because he stood six feet tall and sported a handlebar mustache. The son of a rich landowner, he had flown military aircraft for the Japanese during World War II. Under Kim Il Sung, who rose to power dispossessing landowners and demonizing Japanese collaborators, Lee’s background would normally have qualified him for exile, prison, or death. But his sins were forgiven because the infant North Korean government needed an air force and Lee was eager to help build it. He trained pilots and donated several buildings for classrooms, dining halls, and dormitories. At airfields back in Manchuria, Lee had impressed No as a high-spirited, well-spoken, and decent man. Unlike other senior officers, he did not shout Communist slogans at the men.

  Out on the runway ramp, the general remembered No’s name and gave him a fatherly pat on the shoulder. He cautioned No to be careful of craters and ruts on the runway.

  “Oh yes,” the good-natured general added, “don’t get lost.”

  Waiting for his 9:05 takeoff slot, No sat on the edge of the runway apron. He felt confident enough to glance at note cards scribbled with Kimpo landing information. Seated nearby was Senior Lieutenant Chae Byung Zae, the pilot scheduled to take off after No.

  “I feel like flying a bit longer today than normal,” No said, trying to sound casual.

  Chae then volunteered that he felt like flying near the South Korean border.

  No was silent.

  “Why not land on the other side?” Chae asked.

  Sensing now that Chae was joking, No smiled. But at the same time he was flabbergasted that any North Korean air force pilot would dare make such a joke. For a moment, he was too muddled to say anything. Then he offered Chae the honor of taking off first.

  “You will make history,” No said. “You will inaugurate Sunan airfield.”

  Delighted by the offer, the pilot accepted.

  In training exercises, the first MiG to take off was always the first to land. As Chae headed off for his MiG, No told him, “Don’t land too soon. As soon as you do, they’ll tell me to land.”

  No took off to the north, toward China and into a wind that was beginning to kick up dust. The runway was even bumpier than it looked. As he advanced the throttle and released the brakes, his MiG bounced and shuddered. This must be one of the worst runways in the world, he thought. But as he rose into the sky and retracted the landing gear, the airfield was no longer his problem.

  On the instrument panel of his MiG, No saw the photograph of Kim Il Sung. It was standard-issue on all North Korean aircraft. The picture frame also held an inspirational slogan for fighter pilots. In red letters, it said, “Aim and fire this vindictive ammunition at the damn Yankees.”

  Halfway to China, No veered left toward the Yellow Sea, then left again to follow the Korean coastline south. With another quick left he was back over the interior of North Korea, where down below he could see the ruins of Pyongyang. Even at nineteen thousand feet it looked like a bombed-out hell.

  Here he had to make an irrevocable decision. If he made another left, he would complete his training loop and could land on schedule at Sunan. If he turned right and flew south over the thirty-eighth parallel, he would be a traitor.

  He took a final inventory: Yes, the North Korean government had treated him fairly, trained him to be a jet pilot, and kept him from being butchered as an infantryman in the war. He was a decorated veteran, relatively well paid, and extremely well fed, especially compared with his country’s skeletal peasants. He could perhaps become one of the elite in a postwar order. North Korea, after all, was his home.

  But what about his mother’s defection to South Korea? Uncle Yoo had been blabbing about it. Sooner or later the air force command would have to react. And even if they did not execute him, imprison him, or kick him out of the air force, what would his life be like in North Korea? He envisioned years of living as a pretend Communist, attending boring meetings, betraying friends, never trusting anyone.

  He turned south.

  Increasing his airspeed to 620 miles an hour, he became uncomfortably aware of his heart. It was slamming around inside his chest. He feared it might burst. Holding the control stick with his right hand and rubbing his chest with his left, he tried to calm himself down.

  Fast approaching the border, he craned his neck right and left in the MiG’s cramped cockpit, straining at his oxygen-hose tether to scan the sky for MiGs or Sabres or puffs of smoke from antiaircraft guns. There was nothing.

  Over the radio, he heard the voice of the pilot who had taken off first that morning. Lieutenant Chae was asking the control tower for clearance to land. He had not taken any extra time in the air.

  “Jesus Christ,” No said to himself, “they’ll expect me next.”

  The control tower barked at him. His code number was eighty-seven.

  “Where are you, eighty-seven?”

  The control tower repeated the coded question again and again at five-second intervals.

  Beyond a range of rugged mountains, seemingly floating on the southern horizon, No glimpsed the runway at Kimpo.

  He was certain that by now he had been spotted by American radar. He expected at any moment to see Sabres rising to challenge him. When they came, he planned to wag his wings as a sign of friendly intentions while firing colored flares as a signal of distress.

  Yet the Americans paid him no mind, even as he violated their airspace and flew directly toward the busiest military airfield on the Korean Peninsula. Since the end of the war, Kimpo had become home base for two fighter wings (each with three thousand airmen) and a squadron of mixed propeller and jet aircraft. It was so busy during daylight hours that there was almost never a moment when an aircraft was not landing.

  Although the war was over, fighter pilots continued to train for combat. Nearly every day there were mock dogfights pitting a senior Sabre pilot and his wingman against two other Sabres. John Lowery, then a pilot at Kimpo, flew with a cloth target attached to the tail of his Sabre. Other Sabre pilots would practice shooting at it. “The perceived threat after the war had not changed,” Lowery said. “Everybody that I was associated with was just hot to tangl
e with a MiG. We were spring-loaded to the fire position.”

  And yet, as far as No could tell, the Americans were ignoring his MiG. To keep it that way and to get on the ground as quickly as possible, he decided to make a straight-on approach—from the wrong direction. Every other aircraft was landing against the northerly wind. No decided to land with the wind, heading south. The approach would increase his landing speed, increase the distance he would need to come to a stop, and increase his risk of a high-speed, head-on collision on the runway.

  He had been trained for such risky business in Manchuria, where MiGs often landed simultaneously from opposite directions. As No approached, he caught sight of a Sabre about to land. Not sure that the pilot would spot him on the runway and steer away, No quickly considered his options. To the right of the runway, there was no place to put down. Taxiways snaked through rough ground to ramps where about thirty American fighters were parked. There were wooden barracks, tents, and a large hangar. On the left of the runway, there was a small dirt landing strip and an open field. To avoid a collision, No decided to land there.

  The approaching Sabre, though, came in faster than No anticipated. It landed smoothly and taxied off the main runway, allowing him what seemed to be clear access to the main runway.

  Nearing touchdown, he pulled back on the throttle, lowered the wing flaps, and pressed a switch that extended air brakes on the flanks of the MiG’s fuselage. Locking down the landing gear, he worried again about antiaircraft gunners, expecting that by now they had him in their sights. So he rocked his wings and fired his flares—red, green, white, and yellow—to indicate an emergency landing. He hoped the flares would not be perceived as rockets.

  Then he saw another Sabre, landing at the far end of the runway. They were going to touch down at the same moment.

  No came in much faster than he intended. He believed for a moment that he might overshoot the airfield. His wheels hit midway down the seven-thousand-foot-long runway. Straining the brakes, he was struggling for control when he spotted the Sabre dead ahead. Its pilot did not seem to see him. No steered as far to his right as he could and prayed.

  The Sabre pilot, Captain Dave Williams, had seen No’s plane.

  “There is somebody landing the wrong way,” Williams shouted over the radio, seconds before his Sabre touched the runway.

  With inches to spare, Williams veered right. As the two planes roared past each other, both traveling at about 140 miles an hour, Williams shouted over the radio a second time.

  “It’s a goddamn MiG!”

  Williams stopped at the end of the runway, climbed out of the cockpit, and crouched under a wing to steady his nerves. Sabre pilots in the landing pattern above Kimpo, having heard that a MiG was on the runway, unlocked their guns and prepared to fire. They later judged No’s decision to come in fast and land the wrong way as a smart play.

  “If he had made a go-around, I would have got him,” said Jim Sutton, a pilot who was circling over Kimpo that morning.

  No’s escape planning had taken five years and eight months, dating from the day he first saw the Great Leader in the fertilizer warehouse. His escape flight took seventeen minutes. He took off from North Korea at 9:07 and landed at Kimpo at 9:24.

  After his much-too-exciting landing, No smiled under his oxygen mask and talked to himself.

  “I’m safe. I made it. I’m free.”

  The Americans would not shoot him now, he told himself.

  He was premature in coming to that conclusion.

  American airmen were watching him with their fingers on the triggers of antiaircraft guns. Inside gun emplacements on both sides of Kimpo’s runway, they were trying to decide whether they should shoot at the taxiing MiG. In the end, they decided against it. Had they gone ahead, they would also have been shooting at each other.

  Neither trucks nor troops rushed out to surround No’s plane. The runway was empty except for Dave Williams, the shaken Sabre pilot. No could not tell if anyone else at Kimpo had even noticed his MiG.

  Unsure how to proceed, he taxied off the runway and followed a ramp that took him toward a row of parked Sabres. They had been on runway alert all morning. Pilots sat in their cockpits, ready, if called upon, to start their engines and take off.

  Captain Cipriano Guerra was one of them. That morning he was reading Astounding Stories, a science fiction magazine, but happened to look up as No landed from the north. “I saw this jet coming in upwind,” Guerra said. “I figured one of our guys had goofed.”

  Guerra watched slack-jawed as the fighter touched down, narrowly avoided a collision, and turned in his direction. Only then did he recognize it as a MiG and begin to worry that it might start firing at point-blank range. He was “petrified” and considered preemptively spraying the MiG with .50-caliber machine-gun fire.

  As Guerra nervously eyed him, No eased his fighter into an empty slot between two parked Sabres. He released the clamps that secured the cockpit canopy and rolled it back. Removing his oxygen mask and unfastening straps that connected him to his seat and parachute, he reached out to the instrument panel, grabbed the framed photograph of Kim Il Sung, and ripped it loose.

  He urgently needed to destroy that picture. Climbing out of the cockpit and jumping to the ground, he threw it to the tarmac, smashed the frame, and ripped the photograph in small pieces. A Sabre pilot who watched him concluded that No was saying a bitter good-bye to his girlfriend. “The flier pulled out the picture of a girl from a pocket of his flying suit, ripped it up and threw it away,” he told the Associated Press.

  Standing next to his MiG, No began shouting the only English word he could remember from middle school.

  “Motorcar! Motorcar!”

  Watching all this, Guerra decided it would be inappropriate to shoot the MiG pilot. He jumped down from his plane and jogged over to say hello.

  No saluted Guerra, smiled, and shook the American’s hand.

  They stared at each other and at each other’s aircraft. Without a common language, neither was sure what to do. Within seconds, the confusion increased. Half a dozen other pilots climbed out of their fighters and rushed over to the MiG. No shook more hands.

  Although he was trying to seem friendly, he was increasingly uncomfortable. He wanted somebody to take him to headquarters, where he could explain himself to someone who spoke Korean or Japanese or Russian. But he could think of no way to make this request other than by continuing to shout for a motorcar. As he did so, he sensed that some pilots were beginning to wonder if he was nuts.

  “About then, I decided that I’d better do something with the guy,” recalled Guerra. “So I loaded him in a vehicle and took him to HQ.”

  Within minutes, Sabres at Kimpo were scrambled to intercept any North Korean aircraft that might be dispatched to destroy No’s airplane before it could be examined. None came. Armored cars and soldiers with M1 rifles surrounded the MiG. It was towed to a hangar where it could be hidden from view. That day, mechanics began taking the MiG apart and crating the pieces for transport off the Korean Peninsula.

  Just before Guerra’s jeep reached the office of Lieutenant General Samuel E. Anderson, commander of the Fifth Air Force, a pilot in the front passenger seat turned around and gestured for No to surrender his service pistol. It was the weapon he had considered using for a brief moment to shoot the Great Leader. He handed it over.

  IV

  When the stolen MiG touched down, it was 4:24 a.m. in Moscow, where Kim Il Sung had just completed nine successful days of extracting money and aid from Stalin’s successors.

  The night before, at a sumptuous Kremlin dinner in Kim’s honor, the Soviets announced a record package of reconstruction grants for North Korea, including postponement of loan payments and gifts of heavy equipment and consumer goods. At dinner, the Soviet prime minister, Malenkov, compared Kim’s struggles for independence to those of the thirteen Ameri
can colonies.

  “The glorious Korean people have written a new and wonderful page in the history of the liberation struggle, and this page teaches us that there is no force in the world capable of breaking people who have taken the fate of the country into their own hands,” Malenkov said.

  In response, Kim thanked the Soviets and said that with their help North Korea had “upheld its freedom and independence, thwarted the aggressive plans of the American imperialists, and forced them to sign a truce.”

  When Malenkov and Kim woke up the next morning, the triumphalism of that dinner turned sour. On that day and for the rest of the week, photographs of a dashing young North Korean pilot and a gleaming silver MiG-15 were splashed across the front pages of newspapers in most world capitals, except Moscow, Pyongyang, and Beijing.

  Never before and never since has one North Korean defector stirred up such a global hoo-ha. The Washington Post celebrated No’s heist with a banner headline across its front page, “Red MiG-15 Brought to Seoul.” The New York Times also made No’s defection its lead story, with a front-page headline attributing the theft of the MiG to the American offer of $100,000. Wire service, radio, and television news accounts throughout the week said that the pilot was chockablock with cold war secrets. They recounted how he had handed over the latest model of a battle-ready combat jet the Americans had been trying for years to get their hands on.