South Korea claims ‘third nation’ shot down jumbo

Press, 2 September 1983, Page 1

South Korea claims ‘third nation’ shot down jumbo

NZPA-Reuter Seoul The South Korean Government said yesterday it was “almost certain” that a South Korean jumbo jet which vanished early yesterday over the northern Pacific was shot down by a third country.

The Information Minister, Mr Lee Jin-Hie, did not name the country involved but the airliner, with 269 people aboard, was near the Soviet Island of Sakhalin when it disappeared from radar screens. “According to intelligence gathered so far through various channels it is regarded as almost certain that this civilian aircraft had been attacked and shot down by a third nation,” Mr Lee Said. He said the South Korean Government was making all possible efforts, however, to ascertain the fate of the aircraft and the people on board. Mr Lee said the United States, Japan and other “friendly” nations were helping in the search for the downed plane and any possible survivors.

Mr Lee did not say how the airliner, on a flight from New York to Seoul via Anchorage, was shot down. Unconfirmed reports were circulating in Seoul that the jumbo was destroyed by a Soviet ground-to-air missile. Mr Lee declared: “If this airliner was really attacked and shot down it is a grave violation of international law and an inhumanitarian action which should be deplored by the international society.” He added: “We also want to make it clear that the attacking country should assume all consequences arising from an attack on an unarmed civilian aircraft.”

Mr Lee said the South Korean Government would take all necessary steps at home and abroad when the facts had been established about the attack and the fate of the crew and passengers. The Japanese Foreign Minister said last eveing, that the airliner might have been shot down by the Soviet Air Force. Mr Shintaro Abe said: “There is a strong possibility that a Soviet aircraft shot down the Korean airliner.” The Japanese Defence Agency monitored a message from the pilot of a Soviet Mig23 which said that he was going to fire on the Korean Air Lines jetliner just before the aircraft disappeared. The agency, quoting official sources, said that

iiic. the pilot messaged his base on the Sakhalin island: “I am going to fire a missile. The target is the K.A.L. airliner.” The sources said that the message was intercepted a second before the non-iden-tified plane dropped off radar screens. ■ Earlier, the Soviet Union had denied that the missing plane had been forced to land on the Soviet Far East island of Sakhalin, a Japanese Embassy spokesman said in Moscow. He said a Soviet Foreign Ministry official had told the embassy by telephone that the Boeing 747, Korean Air Lines flight 007 from

New York to Seoul, was not on the island. The Soviet Authorities had denied having any knowlege of the aeroplane. South Korea reported that the plane was forced down on the island, just north of Japan, after vanishing from radar screens while flying across the North Pacific. The South Korean Foreign Ministry said it received word from American authorities that the Boeing was forced to land on Sakhalin, where the Soviet Union maintains big military bases. The Japanese spokesman said his embassy was still pressing Soviet authorities for information on the aeroplane.

American authorities had assured South Korea that the Boeing “had not exploded, or crashed, but was known to have been forced to land at Sakhalin,” he said. The United States Embassy said one of the passengers was Congressman Lawrence McDonald, a Georgia Democrat and a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Mr McDonald, aged 48, a former Navy physician and flight surgeon who has been returned to Congress four times since 1974, was flying to a seminar in Seoul marking the thirtieth anniversary of the signing of the United States-Korean defence pact.

Sakhalin, where the Boeing was reportedly forced down, is a long and narrow island running down the Sea of Okhotsk and separated from the Japanese northern island of Hokkaido by La Perouse Strait, 40 nautical miles wide. The Japanese spokesman said that radar ' screens picked up an unidentified plane flying at 31,400 feet

about 160 km north of Wakkanai on the northern tip of Hokkaido. It vanished minutes later, the spokesman said, adding that Air Force radar showed no sign of any aeroplane 160 km south-east of Nemuro, the last position reported by the missing jumbo. The Air Force spokesman gave the unidentified aeroplane’s position as latitude 46 degrees 30 minutes north and longitude 141 degrees 30 minutes east when it disappeared from radar.

This would put it a few kilometres west of the southern tip of Sakhalin, whose main southern town, Yuzhno Sakhalinsk, has an airport and lies about 250 km north-east of where the aeroplane vanished. The Korean State radio said the last message received by Japanese air controllers from the missing airliner was: “We are going up to an altitude of 35,000 ft.” The message was sent at 6.26 a.m. (New Zealand time) yesterday. Hours later, there was still no trace of the plane and a Korean Air Lines spokesman said, “It is a very extraordinary situation.” He said there were no clues as to why the Boeing had disappeared: “We are still waiting and investigating.” The Japanese Maritime Safety Agency said it had started an air and sea search. In Anchorage, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman, Mr Cliff Cernick, said Anchorage air traffic control staff heard the plane ask for and receive radio permission from Tokyo to change height from 33,000 to 35,000 feet. No reason for the request was given and there was no indication of trouble on board, Mr Cernick said. In April, 1978, a Krean Air Lines Boeing 707 was forced to land in the northern Soviet Union after straying over Soviet territory during a flight on the Northern Polar route. In that incident the Soviet authorities initially denied knowledge of the aeroplane’s whereabouts.