On August 30, 1983, a Boeing 747, Korean Airlines 007 took off for Seoul from New Yorkâ??s John F. Kennedy International Airport. With 246 passengers and 23 crew on board, the routine yet ill-fated flight would never complete the second leg of its journey from Anchorage to Gimpo Airport. Significantly off course, Captain Chun Byung-In inadvertently piloted the plane through restricted Soviet airspace in the Kamchatka peninsula. On September 1, as it flew near Moneron Island, west of Sakhalin, a Soviet SU-15 interceptor, piloted by Major Genadi Osipovich, shot down the civilian aircraft. All on board were killed, including 22 children under the age of 12 and U.S. Congressman Lawrence McDonald of Georgia.
The shoot-down came at a time when Cold War tensions were running high. In response to the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative, aka â??Star Wars,â? the USSR began Operation RYaN (in Russian, short for â??Nuclear Missile Attackâ?), the purpose of which was to collect intelligence on possible plans of the Reagan Administration to launch a first strike. Although the circumstances surrounding the incident remained somewhat unclear at the time, the reaction of both superpowers was characteristic of the Cold War rivalry. The Soviet Union expressed regret over the loss of life but claimed the flight had been on a spy mission and blamed the United States for the provocation. Washington responded by suspending all Soviet passenger air service to the United States, and the Reagan Administration condemned the shoot-down as a â??massacreâ?, a â??crime against humanity [that] must never be forgottenâ? and as an â??act of barbarism.â?
In the following excerpts, Paul M. Cleveland and Thomas W. Simons Jr. describe reactions to the event in Seoul and in Washington, respectively. Cleveland was the Deputy Chief of Mission at Embassy Seoul at the time and was interviewed by Thomas Stern beginning in October 1996. Simons was the Director of the Office of Soviet Affairs at the State Department and was interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy starting in July 2004. Their accounts reveal significant differences between how U.S. officials at State and in Seoul interpreted the facts and the impact of the shoot-down on U.S.-Soviet relations. Washingtonâ??s anti-Soviet rhetoric was much more vehement as compared to Seoulâ??s less politically charged analysis of the incident.
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