DAYTONA BEACH, Florida (AP)?ormer North Korean fighter pilot No Kum-sok, who defected in his MiG-l5 in l953, has quietly lived a unique version of the American life.

Changing his name to Ken Rowe, he became a U.S. citizen and recently even joined the Central Florida East Coast Chapter of the Korean War Veterans Association. He shared his story with 50 fellow veterans.

"This is probably the only country where you can come in here and have many choices to learn, earn money and gain stability." Rowe said. "There? a permanency.

Rowe, now 68, moved to the United States after landing his MiG in South Korea. He earned a degree in engineering, worked for several defense contractors and taught college courses before retiring this year in Daytona Beach.

As a child, Rowe dreamed of becoming an American citizen. At age l8, when he was chosen to enter the North Korean Naval Academy, he began thinking about his escape.

"In l945, Korea was divided in half at the 38th Parallel, with the north in the strict control of the Soviet Union. It made Koreans unhappy forever, including me." Rowe said. "In l949, I was in the naval academy. I wanted to get fully educated, and I was thinking of escaping by ship as a naval officer someday"

Then the Korean War started.

"One day the Russians came in and interviewed us to begin flying jet planes," he said. "I knew the one thing I could not do was flunk the flight training, because once I was a pilot I could defect."

Rowe thought his opportunity had come when he was selected among eight pilots to strafe an airfield in South Korea, but that mission was canceled. He thought he had another chance when he took part in an air parade in August l953, a month after the war ended, but he saw no opportunity.

Finally, on the morning of Sept. 2l, l953, his was the first of the MiGs to take off from a North Korean base and he saw his chance to defect. He landed at the military airfield in Kimpo, near Seoul, the South Korean capital.

Rowe said he knew only one English word, "motorcar," which he shouted.

"They brought me a jeep and drove me away to a doctor," he said. He marveled at getting a full physical examination with all the best equipment and then being brought to a news conference.

Later, he was taken to Okinawa, Japan, where he was questioned and three American pilots tested his plane. They included Chuck Yeager, famous for breaking the sound barrier in l947.

Rowe told his interrogators he wanted to go to the United States and become a citizen.

"They turned me over to the CIA, who didn? know what to do with me," Rowe said. "They said, Why don? you go to school? So I learned English and customs on how to live in this country. I went to the University of Delaware and got a job with DuPont."

Rowe traveled to all 50 states. He worked for Boeing, General Dynamics, General Motors, General Electric, Lockheed, Grumman and Westinghouse. He taught engineering at the University of North Dakota and most recently at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach.

In l996, Row and Roger Osterholm, a fellow professor at Embry-Riddle, wrote a book about his experiences, titled "A MiG-l5 to Freedom.