Air Koryo

So an airshow in North Korea.

How did how on earth did that come about? What on earth led to that happening? Well, actually some people may know going into the airshow 2016 um for many years they'd actually been doing aviation tour well to to start a little bit broader than that people think how on earth do you go to north korea in the first place well there were ways to visit as a tourist um you could also visit so educational things obviously some limited business maybe but you could visit as a tourist they had a tourist ability or capability sorts of options for the country it was a very really good way of bringing in foreign exchange which was very rare and very very valuable to them to have actual foreign currency coming into the country and one of those tourist things that happened tourist activities was aviation tours run by a few different companies i think but primarily by actually british company called juche travel services And what these tours often were, they involved the Air Koryo, the state and only airline of the country, Air Koryo, national airline, which maintained pretty much exclusively a fleet of old Soviet airliners, Ilyushins, Tupolevs, Antonovs.

And those tours, you could fly on them, you could take pictures of them, didn't often involve the entire fleet i don't think but you you got good you know exposure to quite a lot of those those airliners and that was something i'd already be looking at i'd already been i'd seen people who'd been on them before and i was already starting to think well you know i wasn't back then i wasn't massively into airliners per se but old soviet airliners you know who who doesn't like those and i was already looking at doing these tours or considering one of these tours when all of a sudden in i think around january or february 2016 suddenly and i actually don't remember how i first heard about it but it it made waves pretty quickly suddenly this a website comes out advertising An air show.

An air show in North Korea.

in the flying display.

According to the website, I got some screen grabs here, a number of aircraft types are anticipated to take part, including MiG-21, MiG-29, Sukhoi Su-25, and Strangely Or not so strangely It made sense but it doesn't sound right Hughes MD500 helicopter And then they would also be parked up At the airport As a static display When they weren't flying So it was taking part at Wonsan International Airport, which is on the east side of the peninsula.

It also said the Air Koryo aircraft, which was obviously what I was interested in beforehand, would be taking part.

All the various airliners, Ilyushins, Tupolevs, Antonovs, etc., a few helicopters, they would take part in the flying display.

An old twin engine plane awaits us on the tarmac.

It's owned by Air Corio, which is on the blacklist of airlines banned from flying in Europe.

It's a two hour flight over mountains still covered with snow.

Making the journey to her father's homeland in the north is why Claude is here.

They were the crucial witnesses who could settle whether the women really knew nothing.

The Malaysian government tried to bring in three North Koreans to question in relation to the case: Hyon Kwang Song, the second secretary of the North Korean Embassy, Kim Uk Il, an employee of Air Koryo, North Korea State Airline, and Ri Ji-u, the handler known as James.

And it's right here that something shocking happened.

In retaliation, Pyongyang suddenly barred nine Malaysian citizens from leaving North Korea.

Daniel's follow-up this week has two threads.

Hanna wants to know what it's actually like to fly Air Koryo, North Korea's flag carrier.

Daniel wants to know what happens when a state that's basically a cut-off tin-pot dictatorship tries to align with ICAO, the Global Aviation Coordination Body.

He's right that Hanna's question is the funnier one.

They do.

And the pulling is the interesting part.

Because the airline is the state, Air Koryo is controlled by the North Korean Air Force.

One of its two Il-62s is Kim Jong-un's personal aircraft.