No Kum-sok

Rowe spoke fluent English, Japanese and Korean. He lived in Daytona Beach, Florida, where he died on December 26 2022, at the age of 90. Rowe stated that he never second-guessed his decision to defect from North Korea and make a new life in America.

After being taken into custody and debriefed by CIA operative "Andy Brown" (born Arseny Yankovsky, son of Yuri Yankovsky), No received a $100,000 (equivalent to $1,012,811 in 2021) reward offered by Operation Moolah for being the first pilot to defect with an operational aircraft, which he said he never heard of prior to his defection. No explained that North Korean pilots were not allowed to listen to South Korean radio, the leaflets broadcasting the award were not dropped in Manchuria where the pilots were based, and even if they had heard about the reward, the pilots would not have understood the purchasing power of the US dollar; he said the program would have been more effective if they had offered a good job and residence in North America. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was against paying defectors.

In 1996, he wrote and published a book, A MiG-15 to Freedom, about his defection and previous life in North Korea. Rowe retired in 2000 after working 17 years as an aeronautical engineering professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. A biography of No by Blaine Harden was published in 2015 as The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and The Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom. Harden had access to newly released intelligence and to No.

In 1970, he learned from a fellow defector that, as punishment for his defection, his best friend, Lieutenant Kun Soo Sung, had been executed along with four other pilots in his chain of command who were also executed by firing squad. One of the pilots and a friend in his squadron became the General of the Korean People's Army. General O Kuk-ryol, who became the vice chairman of the National Defence Commission in 2009, was considered by some the second most powerful man in North Korea.

In 1954, No emigrated to the United States, where he met Vice President Richard Nixon. After immigrating, he anglicized his name to "Kenneth H. Rowe". In 1957, he was joined in the U.S. by his mother, who had defected from North Korea earlier in 1951. He subsequently graduated from the University of Delaware with degrees in mechanical and electrical engineering. He married an émigré from Kaesong, North Korea; they raised two sons and a daughter, and he became a U.S. citizen. He worked as an aeronautical engineer for Grumman, Boeing, Pan Am, General Dynamics, General Motors, General Electric, Lockheed, DuPont, and Westinghouse.

On the morning of September 21, 1953, No flew his Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 from Sunan just outside Pyongyang to Kimpo Air Base in South Korea. The time from take-off in North Korea to landing in South Korea was 17 minutes, with the MiG reaching 1000 km/h (620 mph). During the flight, he was not chased by North Korean aircraft (as he was too far away), nor was he interdicted by American air or ground forces; U.S. radar near Kimpo had been shut down temporarily that morning for routine maintenance. No landed the wrong way on the runway, almost hitting an F-86 Sabre jet landing at the same time from the opposite direction. Captain Dave William veered out of the way and exclaimed over the radio "It's a goddamn MiG!". Another American pilot, Captain Jim Sutton, who was circling the airport, said that if No had tried to land in the right direction, he would have been spotted and shot down. No taxied the MiG into a free parking spot between two Sabre jets, got out of the plane and began tearing up a picture of Kim Il-sung that was placed in the cockpits of North Korean aircraft, and then threw up his arms in surrender at approaching airbase security guards.

In early 1948, a teenage No attended a speech by Kim Il-sung. Though No was opposed to Communism, he found Kim to be a capable orator. However, No had to keep his anti-Communist views hidden, due to the danger of what would happen if North Korean authorities had found out about them.

Kenneth H. Rowe (born No Kum-sok; Korean: 노금석; January 10, 1932 – December 26, 2022) was a Korean and American engineer and aviator who served as a senior lieutenant in the Korean People's Army Air and Anti-Air Force during the Korean War. Approximately two months after the end of hostilities, he defected to South Korea in a MiG-15 aircraft, and was subsequently granted political asylum in the United States.