Editing Korean Air Lines Flight 007 (section)

==Aftermath==
[[File:KAL Monument.jpg|thumb|"The Tower of Prayer", a monument to KAL&nbsp;007 at [[Cape Sōya]], Japan]]
Two television movies were produced about the incident; both films were produced before the fall of the Soviet Union allowed access to archives. ''[[Shootdown (film)|Shootdown]]'' (1988), a [[telemovie]] starring [[Angela Lansbury]], [[John Cullum]], and [[Kyle Secor]], was based on the book of the same title by R.W. Johnson, about the efforts of Nan Moore (Lansbury), the mother of a passenger, to get answers from the U.S. and Soviet governments. Then the British [[Granada Television]] [[Docudrama|documentary drama]] ''[[Coded Hostile]]'', screened on [[ITV (TV network)|ITV]] on September 7, 1989, detailed the U.S. military and governmental investigation, highlighting the likely confusion of Flight 007 with the USAF RC-135 in the context of routine US SIGINT/COMINT missions in the area. Written by Brian Phelan and directed by [[David Darlow (film producer)|David Darlow]], it starred [[Michael Murphy (actor)|Michael Murphy]], [[Michael Moriarty]], and [[Chris Sarandon]]. An updated version was screened by [[Channel 4]] in the UK on August 31, 1993, incorporating details of the 1992 UN investigation.

On 26 September 1983, [[1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident|a nuclear false alarm incident]] occurred, which almost led to nuclear war. In the aftermath of the airliner shootdown, the Soviet military system was geared to detect a first strike and immediately retaliate, and an optical illusion led the early warning system to malfunction and trigger a false alarm.

===Airway closed===
The FAA temporarily closed [[Airway (aviation)|Airway]] R-20, the air corridor that Korean Air Flight 007 was meant to follow, on September 2.<ref>{{cite news |title=FAA Suspends Use of Route Korean Airliner Had Been Assigned |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |date=September 3, 1983 |page=A22}}</ref> Airlines fiercely resisted the closure of this popular route, the shortest of five corridors between Alaska and Eastern Asia. It was therefore reopened on October 2 after safety and navigational aids were checked.<ref>{{cite news |agency=Associated Press |title=Air France Plane Follows KAL 007 Flight Path |date=October 4, 1983}}</ref><ref>Pearson, p. 256</ref>

NATO had decided, under the impetus of the Reagan administration, to deploy [[Pershing II]] and [[BGM-109G Ground Launched Cruise Missile|Gryphon cruise missile]]s in [[West Germany]].<ref>Blacker, p. 308</ref> This deployment would have placed missiles just 6–10 minutes striking distance from Moscow.{{citation needed|date=February 2023}} Support for the deployment was wavering and it looked doubtful that it would be carried out. When the Soviet Union shot down Flight 007, the U.S. was able to galvanize enough support at home and abroad to enable the deployment to go ahead.<ref>Johnson, p. 75</ref>

The unprecedented disclosure of the communications intercepted by the United States and Japan revealed a considerable amount of information about their [[Military intelligence|intelligence]] systems and capabilities. [[National Security Agency]] director [[Lincoln D. Faurer]] commented: "...as a result of the Korean Air Lines affair, you have already heard more about my business in the past two weeks than I would desire... For the most part, this has not been a matter of unwelcome leaks. It is the result of a conscious, responsible decision to address an otherwise unbelievable horror."<ref>{{cite journal |title=Speech to the National Military Intelligence Association |journal=Aerospace Daily |date=September 25, 1983 |page=99}}</ref> Changes that the Soviets subsequently made to their [[code]]s and frequencies reduced the effectiveness of this monitoring by 60%.<ref>''The Baltimore Sun'', September 15, 1983, via Johnson, p. 60</ref>

The U.S. KAL&nbsp;007 Victims' Association, under the leadership of Hans Ephraimson-Abt, successfully [[Lobbying|lobbied]] [[United States Congress|U.S. Congress]] and the airline industry to accept an agreement that would ensure that future victims of airline incidents would be compensated quickly and fairly by increasing compensation and lowering the [[Legal burden of proof|burden of proof]] of airliner misconduct.<ref name="Hoffman">{{cite news |first=Jan |last=Hoffman |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9802E6D6113AF932A05750C0A961958260 |title=Grieving Father's 14-Year Crusade Helps Air Crash Victims |date=March 31, 1997 |access-date=January 22, 2009 |work=The New York Times}}</ref> This legislation has had far-reaching effects for the victims of subsequent aircraft disasters.

The U.S. decided to utilize military [[radar]]s to extend air traffic control radar coverage from {{convert|200|to|1200|mi|km}} out from Anchorage.<ref group="note">These radars had been used in 1968 to alert [[Seaboard World Airlines Flight 253A]] in a similar situation.</ref> The FAA also established a [[secondary surveillance radar|secondary radar]] system (ATCBI-5) on [[Saint Paul Island (Alaska)|Saint Paul Island]]. In 1986, the United States, Japan and the Soviet Union set up a joint air traffic control system to monitor aircraft over the North Pacific, thereby giving the Soviet Union formal responsibility to monitor civilian air traffic, and setting up direct communication links between the controllers of the three countries.<ref>Taubman, ''Keeping the Air Lanes Free: Lessons of a Horror''.</ref>

On September 16, 1983 a White House press secretary read a statement on the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007. It is announced that the GPS system should be available for civil aviation with the planned completion in 1988.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/statement-deputy-press-secretary-speakes-soviet-attack-korean-civilian-airliner-1 |title=Announcement on Korean Airlines Flight 007 |date=1983-09-16 |access-date=2022-08-27 |publisher=Reagan Administration}}</ref> This communication was sometimes understood as the release of the military project for the general public. However, the GPS system was developed from the start for military and civilian navigation.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/10557 |title=Radionavigation Action Plan 1979 |date=1979-04-01 |access-date=2022-08-27 |publisher=Department of Transportation |last1=Gutwein |first1=Joseph M.}}</ref>

The regular air route between Seoul and Moscow started in April 1990 as the result of the [[Nordpolitik]] policy of South Korea, operated by [[Aeroflot]] and [[Korean Air]]; meanwhile, all 9 of Korean Air's European routes would start passing through Soviet airspace. This was the first time Korean Air aircraft was officially permitted to pass through Soviet airspace.<ref>{{cite news |script-title=ko:서울–모스크바 직항로 4월1일 개설 |url=https://www.hankyung.com/news/article/1990010600221 |publisher=[[The Korea Economic Daily]] |date=January 6, 1990 |language=ko}}</ref>

[[Alvin Snyder]], the director of worldwide television for the [[United States Information Agency]],<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.annenberg.northwestern.edu/pubs/usfa/ |title=U.S. Foreign Affairs in the New Information Age |publisher=Northwestern |access-date=April 5, 2010 |archive-date=July 20, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110720013915/http://www.annenberg.northwestern.edu/pubs/usfa/ |url-status=dead}}</ref> was the producer of the video shown to the U.N. Security Council on September 6, 1983.<ref name="Washington Post 1996">"Flight 007: The rest of the story", ''The Washington Post'', September 1, 1996.</ref> In an article in ''[[The Washington Post]]'' on September 1, 1996, he stated that he had been given only limited access to the transcripts of the Soviet communication when he produced the video in 1983.<ref name="Washington Post 1996"/> When he received full insight into the Soviet transmissions in 1993, he says he realized that: "The Russians (sic) believed the plane to be an RC-135 reconnaissance plane"<ref name="Washington Post 1996"/> and that "Osipovich (the Soviet fighter pilot) could not identify the plane"<ref name="Washington Post 1996"/> and "That he fired warning cannon shots and tipped his wings, an international signal to force the plane to land".<ref name="Washington Post 1996"/> Some of these statements were contradicted by the pilot in an interview with ''The New York Times'',<ref name="nytimes-Osipovich"/> in which he confirmed that he did fire warning shots, but that they would not have been visible as they were not tracers.<ref>Discovery Channel, episode "Unsolved History, KAL&nbsp;007"</ref>

In a March 15, 2001, interview, Valery Kamensky, then Commander of the Soviet Far East Military District Air Defense Force and direct superior to General Kornukov, opined that such a shoot-down of a civilian passenger plane could not happen again in view of the changing political conditions and alliances. In this interview, Kamensky stated, "It is still a mystery what happened to the bodies of the crew and passengers on the plane. According to one theory, right after the detonation of the rocket, the nose and tail section of the jumbo fell off and the mid-fuselage became a sort of wind tunnel so the people were swept through it and scattered over the surface of the ocean. Yet in this case, some of the bodies were to have been found during the search operations in the area. The question of what actually happened to the people has not been given a distinct answer."<ref>Fakty i Kommentarii, March 15, 2001</ref>

On September 1, 2003, commenting on the 20th anniversary of the shoot-down article in RIA Novosti, Mikhail Prozumentshchikov, Deputy Director of the Russian State Archives of Recent History, disclosed that the Soviet naval forces in the search for KAL 007 in international waters, already "knew better where [it] had been downed" while conducting their search and that nothing was found "especially as the USSR was not particularly interested."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.jamesoberg.com/09012003commentarymikhailkal.html |title=James Oberg's Pioneering Space |publisher=Jamesoberg.com |access-date=August 15, 2012}}</ref>

[[Korean Air]] still flies from [[John F. Kennedy International Airport|John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City]] to [[Seoul]]. However, the flight no longer stops at Anchorage or flies to [[Gimpo International Airport]] as it now flies directly to [[Incheon International Airport]]. Flight number 007 has been retired since, using flight numbers for 3 separate flights as 82, 86 and 250. {{as of|2023|October}}, the separate flights are being served using [[Boeing 777F]] for flight 250 as a cargo flight, a [[Boeing 747-8I]] for flight 86 and a [[Airbus A380]] for flight 82.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://flightaware.com/live/findflight/KJFK/RKSI |title=Flight Finder ✈ John F Kennedy Intl (KJFK) – Incheon Int'l (RKSI) ✈ FlightAware |website=FlightAware |access-date=May 7, 2016}}</ref>