According to Vladivostok airport's flight timetable, the group is travelling on a Tupolev Tu-154 jet, a workhorse of Soviet aviation but has been involved in a number of crashes.
It has even been suggested that North Korea has managed to skillfully survive sanctions for so long that it may be willing to teach Russia some of the tricks it has developed in return for nuclear weapons and missile technology.
North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Im Chon Il slammed NATO as instigator of the Ukrainian crisis in a statement published by state-run news agency. He added that North Atlantic bloc and alliance between US, Japan and South Korea is a “cancer tumor” that puts international UN-based order into jeopardy.