NOT DESTRUCTION

On 29 November 1987, Korean Air Flight 858 took off from Baghdad, bound for Seoul. While flying at 37,000 feet over the Andaman Sea, a sudden explosion occurred, killing all 115 passengers instantly. The blast was so powerful that the pilot did not even have a second to send a distress signal to the airport. This sabotage was planned by North Korea. As part of the plan, a 24-year-old North Korean woman was trained and sent on the flight. She boarded the plane in Baghdad, placed a transistor bomb in the overhead compartment, and got off in Abu Dhabi. The powerful time bomb exploded at the set time, destroying the aircraft in an instant.

The purpose of this plan was to sabotage the 1988 Olympic Games, scheduled to be held in Seoul, the capital of South Korea. The communist regime of North Korea could not tolerate this honour going to South Korea. North Korea’s Stalinist dictator, Kim Il Sung, ordered his secret agency to blow up a South Korean plane so that travel to South Korea would seem unsafe and people would cancel their plans to attend the Olympics. It was for this destructive aim that the plane was destroyed.

The destruction of the South Korean plane was a terrible crime but, as terrorism, it failed completely. No nation withdrew from the Olympics; instead, 161 countries announced their participation:

“The destruction of KAL 858 was a monstrous crime, but as an act of terrorism it proved to be a monumental failure. No country was frightened away from the Olympics. On the contrary, 161 countries have announced they will attend, more than at any previous Games.”—Reader’s Digest, August 1988

Any act of destruction against another is really an act of destruction against oneself. Such a person harms only himself and cannot truly harm anyone else.