The Downing of Korean Airlines Flight 007

International law encompasses many aspects that seek to regulate the behavior among states during both times of war and peace. When a state proceeds to act outside of the set of international norms, the international community may act in a multitude of ways from one extreme to the other. This is what the world saw with the downing of a civilian flight in 1983. On September 1, 1983, Korean Airlines Flight 007 was on its last leg of a flight from New York City to Seoul, South Korea. At some point during the flight, for reasons that are highly speculative, the aircraft veered, off course, and crossed over the Kamchatka Peninsula into the Soviet Union. The peninsula housed a top-secret military installation and fighter pilots were sent to intercept the plane. The Soviet Union makes claims that it had tried to communicate with the plane and when they received no response, the fighter pilot fired two missiles: a heat seeking missile and a radar guided missile. It is unclear which missile struck the plane or if both missiles struck the plane, but the plane went down into the Sea of Japan and all 269 passengers and crew members were killed.

Four hours after the flight took off, the flight entered into Soviet airspace but the fighter pilots were unable to locate the aircraft, ran low on fuel, and returned to their base. The flight ended up continuing unaware that it was in Soviet airspace. When it re-entered Soviet airspace, the fighter pilots went back up assuming it was a military aircraft. The pilots had been instructed to shoot in down this time. Tokyo had ordered the plane to climb to 35,000 feet which the Soviets viewed as an evasive maneuver and that sealed the fate of the aircraft.

The downing of Flight 007 was not the first ...

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...assume that the Soviet Union was not guilty of purposely downing a civilian aircraft or the world just didn’t have enough evidence to prove they acted aggressively.

Works Cited

Peter Grier, “The Death of Korean Air Lines Flight 007,” Online Journal of the Air Force Association, Vol. 96, No. 1, January 2013.

John Andrew Morton, “The KAL 007 Incident As An Event In The Evolution of International Law,” University of South Carolina School of Law, December 1985.

Andreas F Lowenfield, “Looking Back and Looking Ahead,” The American Journal of International Law, Vol. 83, No. 2, April 1989, p. 336-341.

Peter Grier, “The Death of Korean Airlines Flight 007,” Online Journal of the Air Force Association, Vol. 96, No. 1, January 2013.

Donald E Wilkes, Jr., “The Death Flight of Larry (Lawrence) McDonald,” University of Georgia School of Law, September 3, 2003.