Free Republic

(CNN) -- The idea that Soviet fighter jets would shoot down a Boeing 747 airliner seems shockingly unbelievable. Two-hundred sixty-nine innocent people died in a largely forgotten Cold War attack that took place exactly 30 years ago this weekend. On a sultry August night in 1983 at New York's JFK airport, Alice Ephraimson-Abt, a brilliant, 23-year-old, blue-eyed blonde, was about to board Korean Air Lines Flight 007 for Seoul, South Korea, halfway around the world. For one last time, she held her father, New Jersey businessman Hans Ephraimson-Abt, before saying goodbye. "There were hugs and I-love-yous," her father, now 91,...

The surviving bomber of Korean Air flight 858 is convinced that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il gave orders to sink the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan in March. Kim Hyun-hee, now rehabilitated and living in the South, was speaking to the Monthly Chosun. "To those who still claim that the result of the investigation was fabricated, the truth doesn't matter. Rather, they're afraid of the truth that North Korea did it, and they just don't like it." She pointed out that the North still denies its involvement in the bombing of the Korean Air flight 858. "North Korea still claims...

Soviets Ordered Korean Airliner Shot Down in 1978 A KAL 707 airliner heading to Seoul from Paris was forced down on a frozen lake 200 miles south of Murmansk after it strayed off course into Soviet airspace on April 21, 1978. During the forced landing, fire from a Soviet jetfighter killed two and wounded 13./Chosun Ilbo DB MOSCOW -- A Korean Airlines (KAL) Boeing 707 carrying 110 passengers and crew from Paris to Seoul that was forced to land in Murmansk after it went off course in 1978 came under missile fire from a Soviet jetfighter, it was revealed Tuesday....