The Associated Press
06 September, 1983
Young In-soon (left) and Kwon Jung (both from South Korea) mourn their relatives, passengers of the Korean airliner shot down over Sakhalin by Soviet fighters a week earlier. On 1 September 1983, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, with 269 passengers and crew on board, was on its way from New York City to Seoul via Anchorage. Due to a navigation error, the airplane entered the prohibited Soviet airspace above the Kamchatka Peninsula. Detected by the Soviet Air Defence Force, the Boeing 747 was shot down by a Su-15 interceptor, when it entered the restricted airspace over the Sakhalin Island, further west. The Soviet Union later denied any knowledge of the aircraft being a civilian plane, claiming it to be a deliberate provocation by the United States.
Sadayuki Mikami
The Japanese press photographer Sadayuki Mikami (Iwaki, Aomori prefecture, 1949) joined the Tokyo Bureau of The Associated Press in June 1969, first as a copy-boy and dark room o...
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