$10-Million Settlement OKd in Plane’s Downing

A federal judge in Los Angeles Tuesday approved a $10-million settlement on behalf of the family of a South Korean hotel owner who died when Korean Airlines Flight 007 was shot down over Soviet airspace nearly 13 years ago.

The case had been scheduled for trial Tuesday before U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie, and several members of the victim’s family had flown from Pusan to testify.

But at the last minute, attorneys for the airline and the widow of Kim Chung-Yeung reached the agreement, the largest stemming from the downing of the South Korean jetliner on Sept. 1, 1983, in which 269 people died, said Tacoma attorney Charles J. Herrmann. He and several other attorneys represent families of 89 Korean victims. “We are very satisfied with the settlement,” Herrmann said. “Frankly, we were surprised.”

Lawyers for KAL, which has since changed its name to Korean Air, declined comment Tuesday.

Kim was returning to his native South Korea after enrolling one of his sons in a private school in New Jersey, when the Boeing 747 nonstop to Seoul from New York was shot down. The jetliner had veered off course until it was 300 miles from its planned track and in Soviet airspace.

Intercepted by Soviet fighters over the island of Sakhalin, the plane was shot down by one or more missiles and crashed.

The incident heightened East-West tensions, with the United States accusing the Soviets of deliberately firing on a civilian airliner and the Soviets charging that the plane was on a spy mission.

Evidence released in 1988 said American intelligence analysts had concluded that the Soviets had mistaken the airliner for a reconnaissance plane.

The Soviets’ assertion that the Korean plane was on a spy mission was rejected after an inquiry by the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations affiliate.

The widow, Park Sun-Young, filed suit in 1985 in Los Angeles, after a relative who lives in Tacoma consulted Herrmann.

She could sue in this country because her husband’s return ticket was issued here, Herrmann said. He said it is more advantageous to file personal injury lawsuits in the United States.

In her complaint, Park alleged that the death of her husband, who also owned three bus companies and a savings and loan association, had deprived his survivors of tens of millions of dollars in income.

Only 137 people, whose relatives had purchased their tickets in the United States, were allowed to file claims against Korean Airlines in the United States, Herrmann said.

The rest received $75,000 each.

None of Kim Chung-Yeung’s family members were in court Tuesday. Through Herrmann, they declined to be interviewed.

“They have lived through the ordeal for the last 13 years and they just want to put an end to it,” Herrmann said. “They’re relieved that they didn’t have to go through a trial.”

Under the Warsaw Convention, a 1929 treaty that governs legal settlements in international aviation disasters, damages are limited to $75,000 per case unless the victims can prove willful misconduct on the part of the airlines.

But in 1989, a federal court jury in Washington held that families of Korean Airline victims could collect unlimited compensatory damages from the airline because of the crew’s “willful misconduct” in straying over Soviet airspace.