The Department of Homeland Security wants to know how an airline passenger boarded a plane in South Korea with a smoke grenade in his checked luggage that was only detected after the plane landed in Los Angeles Oct. 5.

Oh, and there were some other items in the man’s luggage, authorities said: knives, billy clubs, a hatchet, body bags, a biohazard suit, handcuffs and leg irons.

The passenger, Yongda Huang Harris, 28, reportedly was wearing a bulletproof vest and flame-retardant pants which attracted the attention of a Customs and Border Protection officer who notified Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

The main problem was the grenade, which is classified by the Transportation Department as an explosive and prohibited on aircraft. It could have caused a fire.

The passenger, a naturalized American who was traveling to Boston, boarded an Asiana flight in Seoul that had originated in Japan. The TSA seeks to find out how the grenade got by security officials there. It should have appeared during X-ray screening and should have been scrutinized. “That never should have made it on the plane, no way no how. It is troublesome,” aviation security consultant Rich Roth told USA Today.

As for the bulletproof vest and flame-retardant pants, a spokesman for Mr. Harris’s lawyer said, “That was stuff he was wearing as a fashion statement. This is just a normal kid.” The passenger’s advocates have argued that he was not trying to bring down the plane.

The TSA is right to thoroughly investigate how the grenade made it onto the aircraft. The public deserves an explanation.

Thousands of readers like you have made Northern New York Newspapers the number one ranked website* for local news and sports coverage in the north country.

You can continue on to this article in a few seconds, or you can visit one of our websites:

• Watertown Daily Times
• The Ogdensburg Journal
• Daily Courier-Observer