Ciphered Telegram, Embassy of Hungary in North Korea to the Hungarian Foreign Ministry

The Soviet embassy dispatched the statement that TASS had made on September 2^nd with regard to the destroyed South Korean airplane, to the diplomatic representations in Pyongyang. The competent deputy foreign minister, to whom the declaration was to be handed over, received the Soviet ambassador as late as the night of [September] 3^rd.   

To date, the DPRK’s news organs have failed to publish any news about what happened to the KAL plane and about the subsequent South Korean and international reactions. (In the capital, the preparations for the celebration of the national holiday are being continued in an orderly way.)

Referring to the TASS declaration, Soviet Ambassador Shubnikov confidentially informed me that the KAL plane had been probably shot down by a plane of the Soviet air force, but this should not be publicly admitted for the time being. (Taking into consideration who provided me with this information, I request that the information be treated extremely confidentially.)

As I am going to report it in an open telegram as well, a hysterical anti-Soviet and anti-Communist campaign is in progress everywhere in South Korea, which has not been covered yet by the press of the DPRK. At the same time, however, [the North Korean press] castigates the earlier “provocations” which the Southerners had initiated against the DPRK.    

• 93 –  E. –