In 1983 Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down by a Soviet interceptor after straying into prohibited airspace. All 269 people aboard were killed. The incident intensified Cold War tensions and showed how civil aviation could become entangled with military suspicion.

The tragedy gave writers a stark image of the passenger aircraft as vulnerable political body. It deepened late Cold War literature's concerns with borders, miscommunication, technology, and innocent lives caught in state violence.