KAL to Pay Kin of Vanished 115
Korean Air Lines has agreed to pay $106,000 in compensation to relatives of each of 115 people aboard one of its planes that disappeared near Burma in November, an airline spokesman said Thursday.
The government has said that the Boeing 707 is believed to have exploded in mid-flight en route flight from Baghdad, Iraq, to Seoul shortly before a scheduled refueling stop at Bangkok, Thailand, on Nov. 29.
Seoul officials said the explosion was believed to have been caused by North Korean agents.
South Korean investigators are questioning a young Asian woman who, together with a male companion, took poison when the two were stopped in Bahrain for questioning. The man died. Newspapers here and abroad have linked the couple, who got off the doomed plane during a stopover at Abu Dhabi, to a North Korean spy ring, but there has been no official confirmation from Seoul.
The Korean Air Lines spokesman said relatives of the victims would go to Burma to attend a memorial service at sea early next month.
A Burmese ship on Dec. 15 retrieved pieces of wreckage from the airliner in the Andaman Sea but found no bodies.
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