I took the photograph below around 10 minutes after taking off from Incheon bound to Hong Kong in October 2024. The image was denoised, sharpened and cleansed using artificial intelligence for a better understanding (which is why it can look a little artificial, but no elements have been added or removed apart from stains on the aircraft’s window).

The slider below shows how insanely close the North Korean border is from South Korea’s main international airport and from the Seoul megalopolis.

In theory, a commercial aircraft taking off from Incheon would take between five and ten minutes to reach North Korean airspace if it had the intention to do so (which, in real life, of course never happens).

After two years of countless failed attempts, luck finally smiled on me. Very often, even with the best preparation, it’s impossible for the average passenger to see North Korea from the sky because of bad weather or smog, because the plane is landing or taking off in the wrong direction, because you’re sitting on the wrong side of the aircraft and so on. That’s maybe why, when I first posted this image on my Instagram account, some of my Korean followers showed surprise and said they had never realized this proximity when travelling through the busy ICN airport.

The northern edges of the runways are a little less than 35 km from the demarcation line. Still, according to pilots, there is plenty of time: the standardized take-off and landing routes at Incheon make it virtually impossible to inadvertently go north. At most, your aircraft will make a sharp turn to the left immediately after take-off, or to the right before landing, bringing it to within 8 miles (13 km) of the border in the most extreme case.

Did you ever travel to Seoul, and experienced this kind of u-turn in the sky just before landing or just after takeoff ?

The explanation is very clearly stated in the approach chart below: “do not fly north” !

I asked Lionel Djavad-Nia, an Airbus A330 and A350 captain with Air France, to tell me what it’s like to land or take off in Incheon. Here’s what he said:

“For us pilots, it’s basically a non-event. To prepare our flights, we receive geopolitical telegrams informing us of the threats we’ll have to deal with, and in the case of North Korea, there hasn’t been one for years and years. There is one sentence, always the same, which says that the Korean peninsula is regularly subject to periods of tension that can suddenly escalate. But this is just a kind of banal cover that will enable the airline or the civil aviation authorities, if anything happens, to say: that was marked. Crews aren’t even reminded of the risk of incursion into North Korea every time, so much so that it may slip their minds.

“The Incheon airport approach charts show a line to the north of which you should not go. This limit is radial 270, a line given by a radio-electric means from a ground beacon, called a VOR, located in Yangju, north of Seoul. The line is well below the border, so there’s plenty of room for manoeuvre. Air traffic control, arrivals, departures and procedures are all based on this zone to the north, which must never be entered. It’s as simple as that. 

“There’s nothing out of the ordinary about all this. Airspace is well defined and controlled. Aircraft are very well tracked, usually by both ground radar and satellite positioning. A double safety net for air traffic controllers. What’s more, in South Korea, the controllers are well trained and the ground and radar tools are excellent. It’s masterfully managed, it runs smoothly, it’s square, there are no surprises. That’s very reassuring for us. The main hazard in Incheon is not North Korea but the birds. There are a lot of them, especially large seabirds, which can damage the plane.

For added precaution, a total of 877 red-colored Aircraft Warning Panel Markers (AWPM) are placed every 200 to 300 metres along the Demilitarized Zone. They are tilted at 15 degrees towards the sky and facing south, to alert pilots of light aircraft, gliders or other they are entering a no-fly zone. Any aircraft flying beyond the panels is shot down.

Since Incheon airport’s opening in 2001, the only documented case of accidental trespassing to the North by an aircraft happened in July 2024. A China Eastern passenger jet coming from Qingdao mistakenly entered North Korean airspace for two minutes north of Yeonpyeong Island during its approach, following a misunderstanding between the pilot and the air traffic controllers. The incident had no untoward consequences.

In June 2011, an Asiana Airlines Airbus A321 arriving from the Chinese city of Chengdu was descending towards Incheon over Jumun Island (unseen in the picture) when it was mistaken for a North Korean bomber and shot at by two South Korean Marines. The soldiers, who were manning an observation post in the neighbouring Gyodong Island, fired 99 rounds with their K-2 rifles over ten minutes. The plane did not receive any damage as it was flying above the K-2’s range of 500-600 meters, and the passengers and crew learned about the incident only after landing. The two Marines faced no disciplinary action, as they had merely obeyed orders to open fire on anything suspicious and the plane was flying sligthly north of the normal route. Luckily, they were not equiped with anti-aircraft artillery guns that could have blown the aircraft and its 119 occupants out of the sky.

Incheon was ranked the 3rd busiest airport in the World in 2024 and can handle over 1,600 flights a day. Around 73 million passengers go through it every year. Even though no fatal incident due to its proximity to the northern enemy has ever occurred, it is not uncommon for air traffic to be disrupted here because North Korea has sent garbage-laden balloons or drones towards the airport (it happened 12 times in 2024), or has engaged in GPS jamming and spoofing operations or cyberattacks that compromise air safety (578 times between January and August 2024).

Incidents involving the military are more frequent along the border. Between 1958 and 1994, quite a few United Nations Command (UNC) helicopters were shot down after violating North Korean airspace, inadvertently or otherwise, and their occupants killed or taken prisoner.

This does not prevent the UNC from conducting a monthly “right to flight” exercise, also known by its code name “H-128”, with a helicopter landing inside the Joint Security Area less than 90 meters from the border with North Korea to reaffirm their operational freedom within the JSA under the Armistice Agreement. In theory, the North Koreans also have the right to land helicopters on their side of the JSA, but they never exercise it.

North Korean airborne incursions in recent years have only involved drones and balloons. In 2024, in retaliation for right-wing President Yoon Suk Yeol’s hawkish policy towards Pyongyang, North Korea launched thousands of balloon-bound bags of garbage southwards. Some even reached the presidential complex in Seoul. Each time, specialized military teams had to ensure that the garbage contained no dangerous chemical or bacteriological products. This strange campaign came to an end as suddenly as it had begun after Yoon’s impeachment in December 2024.

This happens in the other direction too: in 2024, a drone apparently loaded with South Korean propaganda crashed in Pyongyang, with the North Korean regime threatening war if it happened again (Seoul has never confirmed or denied the UAV’s dispatch). And for decades in South Korea, activist groups have been sending balloons over the border carrying political or religious propaganda, USB sticks containing South Korean music, K-dramas and movies, radios, mobile phones, Bibles and dollar bills.

The DMZ Museum in Goseong, on the east coast, shows interesting samples of the leaflets sent by each side over the years to incite defection: revolutionary pleas for the North, South Korean pin-ups for the capitalist camp. The well-hidden North Korea Human Rights Museum in Seoul exhibits other items usually sent north by balloon.

Airborne defections are rare, with only 6 southbound and one northbound confirmed cases since the end of the Korean War.

In September 1953, just two months after the Armistice, a 21-year old North Korean lieutenant, No Kum Sok, took off in his MiG-15bis from Sunan air base near Pyongyang and landed at Gimpo air base near Seoul just 17 minutes later. Gimpo’s radar was down for maintenance that day, which probably saved his life, as did the fact that he landed the wrong way on the runway, narrowly missing an American aircraft landing in the opposite direction but taking everybody by surprise. He was later granted the Americain citizenship, changed his name to Kenneth H. Rowe and worked as an aeronautical engineer for several big companies including Boeing. His Mig-15 was shipped to the U.S., where it has been on display since 1957 at the Museum of the United States Air Force near Dayton, Ohio.

In June 1955, two North Korean pilots, captain Lee Un‑yong and lieutenant Lee Eun‑song, landed their Soviet-made YAK-18 training plane at Suwon airbase near Seoul. Despite its slow speed and obsolete design, the single-engine aircraft was able to fly undetected across the DMZ, likely exploiting gaps in radar coverage or maintaining low altitude to avoid detection.

Then, in August 1960, Jeong Nak-hyeon, then a second lieutenant in the North Korean Air Force, defected in a MiG-15. He turned south during a training flight near Wonsan, evaded pursuing North Korean fighters landed at a South Korean base near Sokcho, on Korea’s east coast. The South Korean government awarded him a generous financial reward and a medal.

In December 1970, another MiG-15 piloted by a North Korean Air Force major, Park Soon Kuk, also landed in the South near Sokcho, but precise information about it is lacking. Some sources suggest that Park did not intend to defect, but crossed into the south by mistake.

Some 12 years later, during a training mission in February 1983, a 27 year-old captain, Lee Ung Pyeong, flew solo his MiG-19 supersonic fighter from Wonsan to Sokcho without being intercepted – a major embarrassment for South Korean air defense at the time. His jet is now on display outside the War Memorial of Korea in Seoul.

Finally, in 1996, 30-year old North Korean captain Lee Chul So, flew his MiG-19 over the Yellow Sea and into South Korea, triggering air raid alarms in Seoul’s suburbs and scrambling six fighters to intercept him. Lee rocked his wings to signal that he was not hostile, and was carefuly escorted to Suwon air base south of the capital. “I couldn’t live under the North’s system any longer,” he told South Korean reporters soon after he landed.

The only known case of a South Korean fleeing to the North by air is a civilian employee of the army, Lee Jang-su, who defected to the enemy at the controls of a two-seat light training aircraft over the DMZ in the October 1977. His motivations remain unknown. The other person on board, Cho Byung-wook, a Ministry of Defense clerk, was initially treated as a defector, but later reclassified as having been abducted by North Korea.

Up until the 1980s, it was common for radars in the South to detect squadrons of North Korean warplanes rushing south in formation and at high speed, only to scramble at the last moment close to the DMZ just as US air defenses were ready to fire their surface-to-air missiles. A way of testing the enemy’s readiness (and nerves).

If a North Korean fighter jet were to take off from Pyongyang and head directly south at supersonic speed, it could be over Seoul in under 7 minutes – and vice versa. Understandably, the air defenses of both countries are constantly on edge and finger on the trigger. But don’t let that make you freak out or stop you from enjoying your last Korean soju in the lounge before take-off.