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> 行业英语 > 金融英语 > 金融时报原文阅读 > 第590篇

金融时报:大韩航空007号事件之后

所属教程:金融时报原文阅读

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2021年12月26日

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大韩航空007号事件之后

1983年，大韩航空007号航班误闯苏联领空，被苏军击落。这成了冷战期间两大阵营关系最紧张的时刻之一。美国总统罗纳德·里根发表讲话，讲述了事件的前因后果，表明了美国政府的态度。

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

reconnaissance plane 侦察机

strobe light 闪光灯

maneuver [mə'nʊvə] 调遣

closeup ['kləusʌp] 特写镜头

bereaved[bɪ'rivd] 丧失亲人的

silhouette[,sɪlʊ'et] 轮廓

Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland 这里指冷战期间苏联参与的布拉格之春事件、匈牙利事件，以及波兹南事件，派兵干涉或镇压东欧卫星国

wantonly ['wɔntənli] 放纵的

Address to the Nation on the Soviet Attack on a Korean Civilian Airliner （1632 words）

September 5, 1983, by US president Ronald Reagan

My fellow Americans:

I'm coming before you tonight about the Korean airline massacre, the attack by the Soviet Union against 269 innocent men, women, and children aboard an unarmed Korean passenger plane. This crime against humanity must never be forgotten, here or throughout the world.

Our prayers tonight are with the victims and their families in their time of terrible grief. Our hearts go out to them -- to brave people like Kathryn McDonald, the wife of a Congressman whose composure and eloquence on the day of her husband's death moved us all.

The parents of one slain couple wired me: ''Our daughter… and her husband… died on Korean Airline Flight 007. Their deaths were the result of the Soviet Union violating every concept of human rights.'' The emotions of these parents -- grief, shock, anger -- are shared by civilized people everywhere. From around the world press accounts reflect an explosion of condemnation by people everywhere.

Let me state as plainly as I can: There was absolutely no justification, either legal or moral, for what the Soviets did. One newspaper in India said, ''If every passenger plane… is fair game for air forces… it will be the end to civil aviation as we know it.''

This is not the first time the Soviet Union has shot at and hit a civilian airliner when it overflew its territory. In another tragic incident in 1978, the Soviets also shot down an unarmed civilian airliner after having positively identified it as such. In that instance, the Soviet interceptor pilot clearly identified the civilian markings on the side of the aircraft, repeatedly questioned the order to fire on a civilian airliner, and was ordered to shoot it down anyway. The aircraft was hit with a missile and made a crash landing. Several innocent people lost their lives in this attack.

Is this a practice of other countries in the world? The answer is no. Commercial aircraft from the Soviet Union and Cuba on a number of occasions have overflown sensitive United States military facilities. They weren't shot down. We and other civilized countries believe in the tradition of offering help to mariners and pilots who are lost or in distress on the sea or in the air. We believe in following procedures to prevent a tragedy, not to provoke one.

But despite the savagery of their crime, the universal reaction against it, and the evidence of their complicity, the Soviets still refuse to tell the truth. They have persistently refused to admit that their pilot fired on the Korean aircraft. Indeed, they've not even told their own people that a plane was shot down.

They have spun a confused tale of tracking the plane by radar until it just mysteriously disappeared from their radar screens, but no one fired a shot of any kind. But then they coupled this with charges that it was a spy plane sent by us and that their planes fired tracer bullets past the plane as a warning that it was in Soviet airspace.

Let me recap for a moment and present the incontrovertible evidence that we have. The Korean airliner, a Boeing 747, left Anchorage, Alaska, bound for Seoul, Korea, on a course south and west which would take it across Japan. Out over the Pacific, in international waters, it was for a brief time in the vicinity of one of our reconnaissance planes, an RC-135, on a routine mission. At no time was the RC-135 in Soviet airspace. The Korean airliner flew on, and the two planes were soon widely separated.

The 747 is equipped with the most modern computerized navigation facilities, but a computer must respond to input provided by human hands. No one will ever know whether a mistake was made in giving the computer the course or whether there was a malfunction. Whichever, the 747 was flying a course further to the west than it was supposed to fly -- a course which took it into Soviet airspace.

The Soviets tracked this plane for 2 and a half hours while it flew a straight-line course at 30,000 to 35,000 feet. Only civilian airliners fly in such a manner. At one point, the Korean pilot gave Japanese air control his position, showing that he was unaware they were off course by as much or more than a hundred miles.

The Soviets scrambled jet interceptors from a base in Sakhalin Island. Japanese ground sites recorded the interceptor planes' radio transmissions -- their conversations with their own ground control. We only have the voices from the pilots; the Soviet ground-to-air transmissions were not recorded. It's plain, however, from the pilot's words that he's responding to orders and queries from his own ground control.

Here is a brief segment of the tape which we're going to play in its entirety for the United Nations Security Council tomorrow.

[The tape was played.]

Those were the voices of the Soviet pilots. In this tape, the pilot who fired the missile describes his search for what he calls the target. He reports he has it in sight; indeed, he pulls up to within about a mile of the Korean plane, mentions its flashing strobe light and that its navigation lights are on. He then reports he's reducing speed to get behind the airliner, gives his distance from the plane at various points in this maneuver, and finally announces what can only be called the Korean Airline Massacre. He says he has locked on the radar, which aims his missiles, has launched those missiles, the target has been destroyed, and he is breaking off the attack.

Let me point out something here having to do with his closeup view of the airliner on what we know was a clear night with a half moon. The 747 has a unique and distinctive silhouette, unlike any other plane in the world. There is no way a pilot could mistake this for anything other than a civilian airliner. And if that isn't enough, let me point out our RC - 135 that I mentioned earlier had been back at its base in Alaska, on the ground for an hour, when the murderous attack took place over the Sea of Japan.

And make no mistake about it, this attack was not just against ourselves or the Republic of Korea. This was the Soviet Union against the world and the moral precepts which guide human relations. It was an act of barbarism, born of a society which wantonly disregards individual rights and the value of human life and seeks constantly to expand and dominate other nations.

They deny the deed, but in their conflicting and misleading protestations, the Soviets reveal that, yes, shooting down a plane -- even one with hundreds of innocent men, women, children, and babies -- is a part of their normal procedure if that plane is in what they claim as their airspace.

They owe the world an apology and an offer to join the rest of the world in working out a system to protect against this ever happening again. Among the rest of us there is one protective measure: an international radio wavelength on which pilots can communicate with planes of other nations if they are in trouble or lost. Soviet military planes are not so equipped, because that would make it easier for pilots who might want to defect.

Our request to send vessels into Soviet waters to search for wreckage and bodies has received no satisfactory answer. Bereaved families of the Japanese victims were harassed by Soviet patrol boats when they tried to get near where the plane is believed to have gone down in order to hold a ceremony for their dead. But we shouldn't be surprised by such inhuman brutality. Memories come back of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, the gassing of villages in Afghanistan. If the massacre and their subsequent conduct is intended to intimidate, they have failed in their purpose. From every corner of the globe the word is defiance in the face of this unspeakable act and defiance of the system which excuses it and tries to cover it up. With our horror and our sorrow, there is a righteous and terrible anger. It would be easy to think in terms of vengeance, but that is not a proper answer. We want justice and action to see that this never happens again.

Our immediate challenge to this atrocity is to ensure that we make the skies safer and that we seek just compensation for the families of those who were killed.

Since my return to Washington, we've held long meetings, the most recent yesterday with the congressional leadership. There was a feeling of unity in the room, and I received a number of constructive suggestions. We will continue to work with the Congress regarding our response to this massacre.

As you know, we immediately made known to the world the shocking facts as honestly and completely as they came to us.

We have notified the Soviets that we will not renew our bilateral agreement for cooperation in the field of transportation so long as they threaten the security of civil aviation. ……

I am asking the Congress to pass a joint resolution of condemnation of this Soviet crime.

……

(Soon afterwards, the proposal by several countries at the UN Security Council to condemn the Soviet as well as request it to investigate the event thoroughly was vetoed by the Soviet. It was not until 1992 that Russian President Boris Yeltsin declassified the documents that proved how the USSR government covered up the evidence.)

请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：

1.What did President Reagan call the event?

A.the Korean Airline Affair

B.the Korean Airline Incident

C.the Korean Airline Tragedy

D.the Korean Airline Massacre

答案(1)

2.What was the US government going to do, according to this speech?

A.Seek compensation from the Soviet government.

B.Impose sanctions and vengeance on the Soviet.

C.Ask UN to setup an international radio wavelength.

答案(2)