Negative Blogs

The plane went down about 100 miles from the border in what analysts say may have been a defection attempt.

A North Korean military aircraft crashed into a cornfield in northeastern China about 100 miles from the border in what analysts believe was a failed defection attempt, the Chinese government said Wednesday.

The pilot was killed in the crash Tuesday, according to China’s official Xinhua news service, which also reported that the government “is in communication on the matter with the North Korean side.”

Chinese authorities released little information about the crash which took place in Fushun prefecture, Liaoning province. But photographs reportedly taken by villagers were widely distributed on Chinese blog sites showing the wreckage with a red star in a blue circle, the insignia of the North Korean air force. North Korea’s first air division’s 24th regiment is headquartered in Uiju, just north of the border city of Sinuiju, and pilots frequently train near the Yalu River which forms the border with China.

The aircraft was identified as a Russian-made MiG fighter, most likely a MiG-21, although early reports had described it as a helicopter.

South Korean analysts said they believed the pilot was attempting to escape his impoverished homeland, possibly heading toward Russia, which is more hospitable to defectors than China. Along the way, he might have run out of fuel and attempted an emergency landing in the fields.

“This couldn’t be a training accident — the border is clearly marked,” said Kim Chul-woo of the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses. “An attempted defection is the only plausible explanation.”

A respected military analyst in Seoul said that South Korean intelligence is still trying to determine what happened.

“I’m skeptical of what the Chinese government is saying,” said the analyst, who asked not to be quoted by name. The analyst said he believed the plane might have carried one or more passengers besides the pilot and might not have crashed accidentally.

Among the theories in circulation is that the pilot was heading toward a nearby airport in Shenyang and ran out of fuel. The plane was reported not to have sustained serious damage, making it conceivable that a passenger escaped.

Defections have increased in 2010 amid growing food scarcities in isolated North Korea, with most people escaping by foot across the border into China. However, there have been several famous incidents, one in 1983 and another in 1996, in which North Korean air force captains flew their planes across the demilitarized zone into South Korea.

By Barbara Demick

In northeastern China, people look over the wreckage of a North Korean military aircraft. (Yonhap / AFP/Getty Images / August 18, 2010)