Gold to encourage defections, Colombian chocolate robbers and a vanishing Korean actress: headlines from four decades ago
A journey back through time to look at significant news and events reported by the South China Morning Post from this week in history
Beijing offers gold to encourage Taiwan defections, Colombian chocolate robbers hand out their loot to the poor, and a luxury Sai Kung home draws no takers at a government auction; these were some of the fascinating stories reported by the Post four decades ago this week.
February 19, 1978
● Mystery deepened surrounding the disappearance of South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee in Hong Kong when her former husband revealed one of her friends had also vanished around the same time. South Korean film director Shin Sang-ok claimed a close friend of Choi’s surnamed Lee, who was a local resident, could also not be found. Choi, who had arrived in the city on January 11 for a joint Hong Kong-Korean production, disappeared three days later.
February 20, 1978
● British officials claimed that reports about restricting emigration from Hong Kong to Britain when the country’s lease over the New Territories came to an end had been exaggerated. They said the reports had caused unnecessary misunderstanding and fear. At a meeting in London officials said the Chinese government had on past occasions repeatedly stated that the lease expiry date of 1997 was meaningless and irrelevant. The question of Chinese emigration to Britain upon the lease’s expiry was not identified as either an imminent or serious issue.
Cage homes, a kidnapped Korean actress and Soviet espionage gone wrong: headlines from four decades ago
● In Cyprus a gunfight broke out at Larnaca airport around a Cypriot plane on which the two Arab assassins of an Egyptian editor who was a confidant to Egypt’s president Anwar Sadat were holding 11 passengers and a four-man crew hostage. Explosions rocked the airport as Egyptian and Cypriot commandos armed with automatic weapons attempted to storm the sieged aircraft.