The aircraft, a Korean Air Lines NAMC YS-11 flying a domestic route from Gangneung Airbase in Gangneung, Gangwon, South Korea to Gimpo International Airport in Seoul, was hijacked at 12:25 PM by North Korean agent Cho Ch'ang-hŭi (조창희).

One man claimed to have looked out the window of the aircraft despite instructions from the North Korean guards, and saw the hijacker being driven away in a black sedan.

They were educated, upper-class people; Song Yeong-in formerly of the National Intelligence Service commented at the families' committee inaugural meeting in 2008 that they were probably retained by North Korea specifically for their propaganda value.

[12] Oh Kil-nam, who defected to the North for a time in 1986, said that he met the two flight attendants as well as the Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation employees Hwang and Gim (see the list below) employed making propaganda broadcasts to the South[13] and that later he heard from his daughter that the captain and first officer were working for the Korean People's Air Force.

[12] The flight attendant Seong Gyeong-hui's mother was allowed to visit the North in 2001 to see her daughter as part of the family reunions agreed to in the June 15th North–South Joint Declaration; there Seong said that she and the other flight attendant Jeong Gyeong-suk remained friends and were living in the same town.

[14] In June 2010, he applied to the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances of the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate the unreturned passengers as cases of forced disappearance; he spent six months preparing the application, with the help of his friends.