Wikipedia info on MH 653 hijack
I am very intrigued by this tragedy. The Wikipedia information seems highly at odds with most of the posts in this thread. There were quite a number of VIPs and CIPs on the flight which added to a lot of speculation. During that period, the Japanese Red Army was very active in the international arena and according to reports, the hijacker had a Japanese accent. Furthermore there was also a hijack of a Vietnamese jetliner around that time. In the wake of the end of the Vietnam War, the political situation in South East Asia was highly fluid and I think that would have factored in the investigations by the experts.