North Korean Plane Crashes in China
By DAVID BARBOZA and CHOE SANG-HUN
Published: August 18, 2010
SHANGHAI — A North Korean plane crashed in northern China on Tuesday, apparently killing the pilot, the only person on board, according to China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency.
Yonhap, the South Korean news agency, citing unnamed intelligence sources, said that the plane appeared to be a Soviet-era military jet and that the pilot might have been trying to defect.
Xinhua said the plane crashed into a house in a rural area of Liaoning Province, which borders North Korea. The Chinese report said that no one on the ground was killed or injured in the accident.
Cao Yunjuan, a 54-year-old farmer in Fushun County, where the crash occurred, said she saw the plane going down but that she heard no explosion.
“Around 3 p.m. yesterday, I saw a small plane going down and soon it disappeared from my view,” she said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “There was no blast, though.”
Ms. Cao said she lives less than a mile from the crash site and that when she and other villagers went to see the wreckage, many saw a North Korean emblem on the plane’s tail.
Police officials have since cordoned off the area, she said.
Xinhua said China was now communicating with North Korea about the accident.
Yonhap said the North Korean aircraft appeared to be a MiG-21 jet. Quoting an unnamed South Korean military source, it said the jet took off from an airfield in Sinuiju, a North Korean town on the far western border with China. Yonhap said the pilot appeared to be defecting to Russia but lost course and crashed in China. Officials in the South Korean Defense Ministry declined to comment on the Yonhap reports.
Although thousands of North Koreans have fled their repressive home country in the past decade and a half, it would be highly unusual for an elite pilot to defect to a foreign country. A North Korean pilot flew his MiG-19 to defect to South Korea in 1983. Another North Korean pilot did the same in 1996.
David Barboza reported from Shanghai, and Choe Sang-Hun from Seoul, South Korea. Bao Beibei contributed research from Shanghai.