1953 FLIGHT TO FREEDOM

UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE HISTORY

FLIGHT TO FREEDOM 1953

September of 1953, two months after an armistice , 21 year old Lt. No Kum-Sok, a

North Korean fighter pilot, defected to South Korea with a Russian MIG-15B aircraft.

Some months later Kum-Sok , now known as, Kenneth Rowe, was enrolled at the

University of Delaware, living in Brown Hall on the Green, earning a degree in engineering.

Before his defection he was 'trapped' in North Korea with no choice of a career, but had

passed an exam , accepted by the North Korean Naval Academy. He was at that time an

anti communist but there was no way out. Here he was sent to flight school, learning to

fly the MIG-15B , at that time the most advanced jet fighter aircraft in the world. He was in the first class to be trained by Soviet advisers in Manchuria, well hidden from western eyes and ears. By 1951 he was flying over the battlegrounds bu,t as he said, not really ready to

fly the plane.

Unknown to him, his mother had fled to South Korea, and here he was, alone, in a most

dangerous jobs in the world, a combat fighter pilot, flying more than 100 combat missions

during the duration of the war. These pilots flew until they died.

56 days after the armistice he made his decision to defect to the west flying out of Sunan in

the top secret MIG-15B and a 20% chance of success he did so .

At Kimpo Air Force Base his landing caught little attention until it rode to a stop in front

of a group of officers. He was taken in custody , the MIG whisked aware to a hanger.

Kum-Sok received a $100,000 reward from the U.S. Government for bringing the MIG

which he had no idea of while in North Korea. The MIG was flown by U. S. test pilots,

Major Chuck Yeager and Captain Tom Collins who reported the plane had some dangerous

flight characteristics and design flaws and was not 'pilot friendly'.

No Kum-sok, now Ken Rowe, worked a while with the American intelligence service in

Washington and traveled by train to his New York home passing the University of

Delaware in Newark where he enrolled in the College of Engineering earned a bachelor's

degree, continued his education with a degree in electrical engineering degree and became

a aeronautical engineer.

By now he was able to bring his mother from South Korea to live with him as he worked for

duPont, Boeing, Westinghouse, General Electric, married and built a family. While at U of D,

Prof. John A Munroe became friends and had Senator J. Allen Frear of Delaware have him

declared a U. S. citizen by President Eisenhower.

In 2000 he retired from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and lives near it's campus

in Daytona Florida.

Abstract: January February 2019 issue of Graybeards Magazine.