When the Hermit Kingdom Turned Ugly

Just a few months after the end of the Korean War, a bright, well-dressed young man named Kenneth Rowe matriculated at the University of Delaware to study engineering. Although only a little older than most of his classmates (he was 22 at the time), the man whose birth name was No Kum Sok had already lived though enough hardship and misadventure for an entire lifetime. On September 21, 1953, just days after an uneasy armistice had been signed to end hostilities between belligerents (despite not actually ending the war that officially is still extant), he had piloted his MiG-15 fighter plane across the 38th parallel, defecting from North Korea and landing unannounced at an American airbase. He had no idea about the $100,000 that the U.S. government had promised to any defector who would deliver a working MiG.