South Korean Boeing 727 Shot Down

On September 2, 1983, Utusan Malaysia reported that a South Korean Boeing 727 carrying 269 people had vanished from radar. A Soviet MiG-23 fighter had shot down the aircraft with a missile, killing everyone on board.

South Korea’s Information Minister, Lee Jin-Hie, confirmed that the plane had been brought down by a country, but did not identify it in the reported statement. The aircraft was later confirmed to have crashed in Soviet waters near Sakhalin Island.

The archive entry also recalls other events associated with September 2. In 1980, the MARA Skills Institute in Johor Bahru was described as Malaysia’s only institute offering courses in marine welding, shipbuilding technology and metal plating.

In 1983, Malaysian citizen Mak Foon Than, 32, appeared before the South Kowloon Magistrates’ Court on a charge of murdering Bank Bumiputera officer Jalil Ibrahim. In 1984, three-year-old Wong Ngun Phlew suffered only facial injuries after falling from a two-storey building in Genting Highlands, Pahang.