{"id":8410966,"date":"2026-08-01T09:27:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T07:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/no-kum-sok-mig-15-defection-1953\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T10:15:02","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T08:15:02","slug":"no-kum-sok-mig-15-defection-1953","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/it\/no-kum-sok-mig-15-defection-1953\/","title":{"rendered":"The Communist Pilot Who Handed America a MiG"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style><p>On the morning of 21 September 1953, a flight line at Kimpo Air Base watched a swept-wing jet swing onto the approach and took it for one of their own <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/it\/aerei\/f-86-sabre\/\">F-86 Sabres<\/a>. It wasn&rsquo;t. It was a Soviet-built <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/it\/aerei\/mig-15-fagot\/\">MiG-15<\/a>, still wearing North Korean red stars, flown by a 21-year-old enemy lieutenant named No Kum-Sok.<\/p><p>He landed the wrong way down the runway, nearly clipping a Sabre, taxied between two American jets, climbed out, tore the portrait of Kim Il Sung from his cockpit, and threw up his hands.<\/p><p>In seventeen minutes he had crossed from the world&rsquo;s most closed society into the West &mdash; and handed the United States the prize it had chased for three years: an intact MiG-15. What he did not know was that he had also just earned a secret $100,000 bounty.<\/p>\r\n<div style=\"background:#f5f5f5;padding:20px 24px;margin:24px 0;border-radius:8px\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 10px;font-weight:700;font-size:18px;color:#222\">Informazioni rapide<\/p><table style=\"width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;font-size:15px\"><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;font-weight:600;color:#333;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Pilota<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0;color:#444\">Senior Lt No Kum-Sok, North Korean air force, age 21<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;font-weight:600;color:#333;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Data<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0;color:#444\">21 September 1953, weeks after the armistice<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;font-weight:600;color:#333;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Aeromobili<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0;color:#444\">MiG-15bis &mdash; later marked &ldquo;616&rdquo; by the USAF for testing<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;font-weight:600;color:#333;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Itinerario<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0;color:#444\">Sunan, near Pyongyang, to Kimpo Air Base, South Korea<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;font-weight:600;color:#333;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Flight time<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0;color:#444\">About 17 minutes<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;font-weight:600;color:#333;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Reward<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0;color:#444\">Operation Moolah&rsquo;s $100,000 &mdash; which No says he never knew about<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;font-weight:600;color:#333;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">The jet<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0;color:#444\">Tested by US pilots incl. Chuck Yeager; now at the National Museum of the USAF<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;font-weight:600;color:#333;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Later life<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0;color:#444\">Emigrated in 1954, became engineer Kenneth H. Rowe<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/div>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">An Anti-Communist Hiding in a Cockpit<\/h2><p>No Kum-Sok grew up quietly anti-communist under a regime where such views could get a man killed. To survive &mdash; and to fly &mdash; he buried them, talked his way into pilot training, and was sent to learn the MiG-15. By the war&rsquo;s end he had flown scores of combat missions, expecting to keep fighting until he died.<\/p><p>Defection, he always insisted, was about escape, not money. The hard part was finding a moment when he was airborne, armed, and briefly beyond the reach of his own side.<\/p>\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img data-opt-id=271612598  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:obPJ.c8f3\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/08\/no-kum-sok-mig-15-usaf-616.jpg\" alt=\"No Kum-Sok MiG-15 in USAF markings\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block;border-radius:6px\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">No Kum-Sok&rsquo;s MiG-15, repainted as &ldquo;616&rdquo; for American evaluation. U.S. Air Force.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Seventeen Minutes to Freedom<\/h2><p>On that September morning he took off from Sunan as if on a routine patrol, then broke south alone across the front. He was too far from base to be chased, and the American radar covering Kimpo happened to be down for maintenance. He crossed the line in minutes.<\/p><p>Landing against the traffic pattern was itself luck: pilots said that had he joined the pattern the &ldquo;correct&rdquo; way, he would have been spotted and shot down. Instead the most secret fighter of the Cold War rolled to a stop on an American airfield.<\/p>\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JB3NhiW2ImY\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0;border-radius:8px\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px;color:#777;font-style:italic;text-align:center;margin-top:-12px\">No Kum-Sok, beside his own jet, recounts the defection.<\/p>\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><a href=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:obPJ.c8f3\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/08\/no-kum-sok-portrait-1953.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"flex-shrink:0\"><img data-opt-id=130390005  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:obPJ.c8f3\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/08\/no-kum-sok-portrait-1953.jpg\" alt=\"No Kum-Sok\" style=\"width:96px;height:96px;border-radius:50%;object-fit:cover;display:block;border:2px solid #ddd\"><\/a><div><em>&ldquo;I figured I had a 20 percent chance of success. I thought that was good enough.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>No Kum-Sok<\/strong> &mdash; Defecting pilot, later Kenneth H. Rowe (2011)<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The $100,000 He Never Heard Of<\/h2><p>Months earlier, the US had launched Operation Moolah, promising $100,000 and asylum to the first communist pilot to deliver an intact MiG-15. Leaflets rained on air bases and the offer was broadcast in several languages &mdash; yet No landed genuinely unaware of it.<\/p><p>North Korean pilots, he explained, could not listen to Southern radio, and the leaflets were not dropped where the MiGs were actually based. He was eventually handed a US Treasury check for $100,000, dated April 1954.<\/p>\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/OdiFzeWCV0Y\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0;border-radius:8px\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px;color:#777;font-style:italic;text-align:center;margin-top:-12px\">No Kum-Sok and his biographer on the flight and its aftermath.<\/p><h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Yeager Flies the Enemy&rsquo;s Jet<\/h2><p>The MiG was taken apart within a day, flown to Okinawa, and rebuilt in USAF markings with &ldquo;616&rdquo; on its nose. Test pilots, among them Major Chuck Yeager, put it through its paces &mdash; with No himself briefing them on its quirks. Their verdict: a fast-climbing, high-flying fighter that was also treacherous near the edge of its envelope.<\/p>\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #1565c0;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a quirky airplane that has killed a lot of its pilots.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Maj. Chuck Yeager<\/strong> &mdash; USAF test pilot, on the MiG-15 (Yeager, 1985)<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Becoming Kenneth Rowe<\/h2><p>In 1954 No emigrated to the United States and chose a new name: Kenneth H. Rowe. He earned engineering degrees, worked for Boeing, General Dynamics and Lockheed, and later taught for 17 years at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.<\/p><p>He wrote a memoir, visited his old jet at the museum many times, and said he never once second-guessed his decision. He died in 2022, at the age of 90 &mdash; an ocean and a lifetime away from the runway at Sunan.<\/p>\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vJRA-RMJbys\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0;border-radius:8px\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:14px;color:#777;font-style:italic;text-align:center;margin-top:-12px\">The seventeen-minute flight to Kimpo.<\/p><p style=\"font-size:14px;color:#666;font-style:italic;margin-top:20px\">Sources: Wikipedia (No Kum-sok; Operation Moolah); National Museum of the US Air Force; University of Delaware Messenger (2011); Yeager: An Autobiography (1985).<\/p>\r\n<div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Post correlati<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/north-american-b-45-tornado-first-jet-bomber\/\">Quattro primati, poi dimenticati: il B-45 Tornado<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/constant-peg-red-eagles-secret-migs\/\">I MiG segreti del deserto del Nevada<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/beryl-markham-first-woman-atlantic-east-west-1936\/\">La donna che ha attraversato l&#039;Atlantico in modo pericoloso<\/a><\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No Kum-Sok flew his MiG-15 to South Korea in 1953, handing the West its first flyable MiG and unknowingly winning a $100,000 reward.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":8410569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[666,664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8410966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-and-legends","category-military-aviation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.1 - 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