Good News’ ending was about Lieutenant Seo Go-myung and the Deputy Minister of Transport of Japan, Shinichi Ishida, making a Hail Mary attempt to stop the members of the Red Army Faction from detonating a bomb on the plane they had hijacked and killing over 100 passengers. How did things come to that? Well, on March 31, 1970, 9 members of the Red Army Faction boarded Flight 351, which departed from Japan’s Haneda Airport and would land at the Itazuke Airport. But mid-flight, the hijackers announced that since Japan had reached that stage of advanced capitalism that Marx had warned them about, they were going to initiate an armed revolution. And for that, the hijackers wanted the pilots, Maeda and Kubo, to take the plane to Pyongyang, North Korea, where the Red Army Faction would build their army and then return to Japan to revolt against the bourgeois. After making a brief pit stop at the Itazuke airport, where the Japanese government and defense forces made a fool out of themselves, Flight 351 took to the skies. That’s where the Korean Central Intelligence Agency stepped in, with its director, Park Sang-hyeon, deciding to solve this “humanitarian issue” in order to get into the good books of His Excellency and the USA. He appointed Nobody, who in turn appointed Seo to get Flight 351 to land at Gimpo Airport, South Korea. Once that part was over, they had to figure out how to get the passengers off the flight without triggering the hijackers to detonate the bomb. Did Seo succeed, or did he fail? What’s the meaning of success and failure in situations like these? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
The Hijackers Rejected The First Lady’s Offer
After learning that Flight 351 was at the Gimpo Airport, Japanese Minister Sugimoto and Deputy Minister Ishida arrived there to take stock of the situation. They exchanged pleasantries and thanked Seo and Park for at least doing their best to keep the hostages alive. This caused Park to get a little overconfident, and, instead of letting Seo do the talking, he tried to convince the hijackers to release the hostages and then leave for North Korea. But the Red Army leader ordered Park to send Seo over to the plane for a face-to-face conversation because he was the real reason why all of them were stuck in South Korea instead of “living it up” and starting an armed revolution in North Korea. Seo had no option but to oblige, and moments after he boarded the flight, one of the hijackers strategically stabbed the leader so that “his life would serve as the deadline.” The KCIA and the South Korean Air Force had till noon to decide how they’d proceed with this situation. If they didn’t allow the plane to depart for Pyongyang, they’d blow up the plane, killing the hostages as well as the hijackers. If they allowed the plane to leave for North Korea, they wouldn’t detonate the plane, the hostages would get to live, and the bleeding hijacker would get the treatment he needed.
After this demand, Nobody sprang into action and drummed up some anti-Communist sentiment against the Red Army Faction by spreading the fake news that there was a South Korean passenger on Flight 351. Nobody hoped that that’d pressure the hijackers into releasing all the hostages before leaving for Pyongyang. To make things a little more legit, even the First Lady showed up to deliver an official government order that the Red Army Faction would be allowed to leave for North Korea once they released the hostages. However, the hijackers didn’t believe all that and tore up the order. Given how Nobody’s professional aspirations depended on whether or not Park retained his job after this whole storm had passed, he advised Park to leave the airport, citing some frivolous reason, and let Seo take the fall. Since Park was a spineless individual, he heeded Nobody’s advice a little too diligently. With Park out of the picture, Seo and Ishida were allowed to act as freely as they’d like.
Ishida Surrendered Himself to Save the Hostages
At the end of Good News, realizing that there are only 4 minutes left till noon, Seo decided to approach the plane and personally convince them to not detonate the bomb. This affected the hijackers on an emotional level because he was the only member of the air force who was coming towards the plane, while the rest of the defense forces had retreated far away from the aircraft in order to avoid being killed in the blast. This showed that Seo believed in the Red Army’s threats, and he was ready to put his life on the line for the sake of those passengers. Another miracle happened at around the same time; subtly coerced by Nobody, Ishida decided to present himself as the hostage in exchange for the passengers. That also affected the minds of the hijackers in a positive way because Ishida putting his life on the line for the common folk meant that a representative of the government was actually working for the people who had elected them, not the businesses that were filling the government’s coffers. Hence, they chose to release the passengers and then traveled to North Korea with Ishida and the pilots. Later on, through a conversation between Nobody and Seo, we learned that Flight 351 got to land safely in Pyongyang. Ishida, Maeda, and Kubo were eventually returned to Japan.
As per the South Korean spies in North Korea, the arms and bombs that the Red Army was flaunting were all fake; they never intended to detonate anything. The katanas were real though, and if they weren’t allowed to leave Gimpo, the hijackers would have killed each other. On a geopolitical level, this incident had prompted the US to talk to the Soviet Union and try to unify South and North Korea. That meant that during this ongoing treaty, if South Korea had any kind of conflict with North Korea, that’d upset the US, thereby forcing them to stand down or take some kind of a neutral stance. Since the credit for “solving” the hijacking ultimately went to the Japanese, because everyone saw Ishida making the big move to fulfill the desires of the hijackers, the South Koreans technically couldn’t use all the work they’d done to stall the hijackers as leverage to influence the geopolitical climate. Seo didn’t get a medal or a promotion for everything he had done; all he got was a new watch from Nobody because he had broken the one he had while running over to the plane. Meanwhile, Nobody—who was allegedly a former North Korean soldier—finally got his Resident Registration Card for the splendid work he had done. He dubbed himself Choi Go-myung, and although he claimed that the reason behind him choosing that name was irrelevant, it was obvious that it was his way of paying his respects to Seo Go-myung.
What’s True and What’s Fiction?
Alright, so, the first thing that I think that I must address, albeit briefly, is how true the story of Good News is and whether or not the truth matters at all. So, almost everything leading up to the hijacking of Flight 351 is true. The Red Army Faction separated from the Communist League and decided to ignite an armed revolution to put a stop to USA and its allies’ influence over Japan. There were 9 hijackers that boarded the plane, and they did have katanas, firearms, and a bomb. They kept referring to Ashita no Joe. However, instead of asking the pilots to take them directly to Pyongyang, the hijackers actually wanted to go to Cuba because, well, Fidel Castro was over there. It was only after they realized that Flight 351 didn’t have enough fuel that they made a pit stop at Fukuoka, and then they proceeded towards Pyongyang. In the movie, the pilots lied about the lack of fuel, and they made a pit stop at Itazuke before taking to the skies.
In real life, apparently the airport staff of Fukuoka that gave the map of the Korean Peninsula to the pilots attached a note to it instructing them to tune in to a specific frequency. The air traffic controllers then gave them false directions to direct the plane to Gimpo instead of Pyongyang. In the movie, there was no such note attached to the map that Maeda and Kubo got. Also, it was a stroke of luck that Seo got to tune into the emergency frequency that Maeda and Kubo were using before the North Korean air traffic controller could do the same. Much like in the movie, in real life, Gimpo Airport was made to look like it was a North Korean airport, and it didn’t take long for the hijackers to figure out the ruse. Shinjiro Yamamura, Vice Minister for Transport of Japan, did offer himself up to the hijackers to free the hostages. As shown in the movie, Yamamura and the crew of Flight 351 were eventually returned to Japan. Everything other than these points—especially the parts about Nobody using a lieutenant of the air force to subtly push the Japanese Deputy Minister for Transport to surrender himself to the hijackers—could be pure fiction, or it could be absolutely true. However, as mentioned before, does the truth really matter?
What Can We Learn From the film?
As far as my understanding of politics and revolutions goes, the main point of Good News is that the major chunk of this planet’s population doesn’t really believe in anything. We have manufactured political ideologies, some of which are mixed with a hint of racism and casteism, but our belief in them is a big fat zero. We can undoubtedly go to extreme lengths to prove that we are ready to die for what we believe in, but at the end of the day, we never really commit to it. Hence, we create endless lists of rules, regulations, protocols, orders, and whatnot to paint this image in front of the world that our governments and our revolutionaries actually know what they are doing. Because nothing reassures the general public that their fate is in good hands more than a bunch of complicated contracts that can’t be deciphered by our mortal minds. That said, in this world of educated idiots and uneducated fools, there are some who want to do the right thing, which is saving lives. It doesn’t matter to them if the person whose life is at stake is innocent or guilty; they just want to make sure that they don’t suffer a premature death. And as things get more and more complicated, that seems to be the best ideology. Now, governments and anti-establishment movements do recognize that. However, given how that kind of thinking isn’t considered hip in the world of geopolitics and since idealism can’t be monetized easily, these humane people are either treated like “unsung heroes” or martyrs; there’s no in-between. The worst part is that there’s no guarantee that your acts of selflessness will have any actual impact.
Since almost every element of geopolitics is controlled by the US, no matter what you do, everyone has to make sure that the Americans benefit. If China ends up taking the top spot, you’ll have to appease them. You get the gist. Based on all that, I can say that the truth doesn’t really matter, or at least that’s what we’ve been told to believe. The final result of any kind of conflict matters. The details, especially if they run the risk of sullying the broader narrative, have to be rendered irrelevant even if they’re not. That said, is this strategy benefiting humanity in any way? Are these complicated mental gymnastics worth the trouble? Or can we just give “being nice and honest to each other” a chance? You don’t have to be a genius to look around and make the inference that the state of the world is worse than it ever was before. Corruption is rampant. There are multiple armed revolutions happening as you read this sentence. War and genocide have become common occurrences. Basic amenities are becoming rare. On top of all that, there’s the deteriorating ecology. So, yeah, maybe we should stop being held hostage by capitalist overlords and side with those who prioritize humanity over everything, lest we want to allow our species to become irrelevant to the history of this world. Anyway, those are just my thoughts on Good News. If you have thoughts on the same, feel free to share them in the comments section below.
