Kenneth Rowe, also known as Lt. No Kum-Sok of the North Korean Air Force.
This is an interesting historical footnote (recommended for use in schools) that I was previously unaware of.
Lt. Kum-Sok was born in what was then “the northern part of the Japanese-occupied Korean Peninsula”. He became a navel cadet, transferred to the North Korean Air Force, and learned to fly MIGs.
…
On the morning of September 21, 1953, while flying in a patrol of 16 planes, he broke off from the formation and flew across the DMZ to Kimpo AFB in South Korea.
Luck was with him. The American air defense radar just north of Kimpo had been shut down for routine maintenance, and neither American planes aloft nor antiaircraft crews had spotted him.
During the late stages of the Korean War, the Air Force had dropped leaflets over North Korea offering a $100,000 reward to the first North Korean pilot to defect with a MIG. Mr. Rowe maintained that he knew nothing of that reward and said he had simply wanted to live a free life. But he accepted it.
This was the first intact MIG that the United States was able to analyze. (At least, according to the NYT: Wikipedia claims that Franciszek Jarecki, a Polish pilot, defected in one on March 5, 1953.)
Again per Wikipedia (quoting Yeager’s autobiography), “the MiG-15 had dangerous handling faults…during a visit to the USSR, Soviet pilots were incredulous he had dived in it, this supposedly being very hazardous.”
He was 90 when he passed.
And his plane?
Seven decades later, that plane still exists, and resides at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force near Dayton, Ohio.
Its red star repainted, it is on display alongside an American F-86 Sabre jet, a remembrance of the dogfights of the Korean War in the swath of sky known as MIG Alley.