Oh, the History Channel

So, I am a huge dork and used the time I had from arriving home from work early to lose myself in the History Channel. While watching a segment about Japanese intelligence, an event that is rarely metioned in my Asian textbooks and internaltional relations books was highlighted. Apparently Japanese intelligence agents listening to the din of frequency coming from the Soviets actually heard the communications moments before the Korean Airline Flight 007 was shot down on September 1, 1983. I felt really awful that I had never heard about this awful incident in which killed so many innocent civilians and marked a dramatic rise in the strife between the US and USSR. To read more in general about KAL 007, two website profile the event as part of a calendrical alamanac.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/1/newsid_2493000/2493469.stm

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=2777

To go in more detail and get some contemporary academic insight on the event please reference pages 114-116 of the article "South Korea in 1983: Crisis Management and Political Legitimacy” by Chae-Jin Lee in the Journal Asian Survey Vol. 24, No. 1. The article even discusses the UN activities (and lack thereof) as a result of KAL 007 and the five demands the South Korean government was promoting to present to the USSR.