North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s private jet was observed in early July making a sudden stopover at Hyesan City on its way to Ryanggang Province. Conjecturing on the reason for the sudden stopover, sources familiar with the incident have suggested a high probability that the plane was malfunctioning and required an emergency landing.
During a telephone call with Daily NK on July 20, a source in China close to North Korean affairs said, “Around July 5 or 6 the phones suddenly cut out. It was bizarre. About 30 minutes later, a white plane landed at Hyesan Airport. It was a very large and white plane, and residents were saying to each other, ‘Looks like the Supreme Dignity [Kim Jong Un] has come.’”
While the reasons for telephones in the area suddenly cutting out remain unknown, deliberate signal jamming by the state is the prime culprit. Jamming involves active interference with specific radio wave frequencies that causes disruption to cell phone services. The fact that landline telephones were simultaneously disconnected suggests that the purpose was to prevent the spread of information within a specific period of time.
According to a source in Ryanggang Province , all mobile phones and landlines were disabled for about five hours.
Considering the tight restrictions on aircraft usage in North Korea, as well as the security measures in place to maintain these strict limitations, it is likely that Kim Jong Un was on board the plane in Hyesan.
North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency reported that Kim Jong Un visited a construction site in Samjiyon on July 10 (North Korean media typically reports on the leader’s movements one to two days after they occur) suggesting that his intended destination was Samjiyon, not Hyesan.
According to the source, the distance between Samjiyon and Hyesan is 60 kilometers. Although the distance between the two is short, the roads connecting the cities are in a state of disrepair, requiring four hours to drive. This makes it doubtful that the North Korean leader would have traveled the distance by road.
Hyesan Airport is still under construction and barely operational. Kim Jong Un is known to have two planes for personal use, although it has not been confirmed which plane he was on during the incident.
One of Chairman Kim’s planes is the Chanmae 1 – named after a type of hawk. It is a model Ilyushin 62, built by the Soviet Union in the mid-1970s and refurbished in North Korea in 1980. The Ilyushin 62 was produced from 1960 to 1990, and has since been discontinued.
Kim Jong Un’s other plane is a Ukrainian-made Antanov 148, built in 2012. Two were brought to North Korea in 2013, and one of these is known to be in use as Chairman Kim’s aircraft. In 2015, KCNA showed footage of Kim Jong Un in flight on the Antanov 148.
The Antanov 148 is the same type of plane that crashed last year in the Southwest region of Russia while heading for Moscow, killing 65 passengers and 6 crew. The cause of the crash was determined to be mechanical defect.
Both sources said that it is possible that the recent incident in Hyesan, directly or indirectly, contributed, to Kim Jong Un’s absence at several important events that took place in Pyongyang within the same time frame, including intern-Korean basketball matches (Kim Jong Un first suggested the hosting of a united North-South basketball match during his summit meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae In), a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and the 24th anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s death.
