Force Base after attempts to return it to North Korea were unsuccessful. It is currently on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force. Post-defection life 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 to South 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. 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 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. Personal life 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. At the time of his death, Rowe was survived by his wife, daughter, younger son and one grandson. References Bibliography External links 1932 births 2022 deaths Korean aviators Korean War pilots North Korean emigrants to the United States North Korean defectors North Korean military personnel of the Korean War