SQ117 / Fred Cheong

The hardest enemy to kill is the one inside you

There's a story about Singapore I think every Singaporean should know. But almost nobody does.

March 26, 1991. A routine SQ117 flight from KL to Changi. 125 people on board. Fifty-minute shuttle most passengers had taken dozens of times.

Ten minutes after takeoff, four men walked out of the lavatories with knives and what looked like sticks of dynamite.

"Sit down and don't move. This is a hijack."

What followed was 9 hours of terror. The hijackers beat crew members. Threw two stewards out of the plane — a 14-foot drop onto the tarmac. Set newspapers on fire inside the cabin. Then came the final ultimatum: start killing one passenger every ten minutes.

Here's what most people don't know about what happened next.

A team of SAF Special Operations Force commandos had been waiting on the ground all night. One of them was Fred Cheong — handpicked for the SOF in 1984, one of the few Singaporeans to ever graduate from US Navy SEAL training. The kind of guy you want between you and the worst thing that could happen.

With three minutes left on the hijackers' deadline, the order came.

The commandos blew the doors. Tossed stun grenades. Stormed the aircraft.

30 seconds. That's how long the entire rescue took. All four hijackers killed. Not a single hostage hurt. The hijack leader took five bullets to the chest and was still alive — tried to ignite his device before the team leader shot him dead.

Five bullets. Still fighting. Three seconds from catastrophe.

Fred's words about it were almost eerily calm: "We knew exactly what to do. You cannot go there and start to think. You go there and do what you train for."

But here's where the story takes a turn nobody saw coming.

Fred served 32 years in the SAF. Retired in 2013. Then he flew to Dharamsala, India — and became a Buddhist monk. In 2017, the Dalai Lama himself ordained him. Gave him the name Venerable Tenzin Drachom.

A Navy SEAL-trained commando who killed four hijackers in 30 seconds, ordained by the Dalai Lama.

When asked about it, he said something I haven't been able to stop thinking about:

"In the military, I destroyed the enemy outside. Now I destroy the enemy inside."

Think about that for a second.

A man who could clear an aircraft in 30 seconds spent the next chapter of his life sitting still. Because he understood something most of us never confront — the fights that matter most don't have enemies you can see.

Everyone celebrates the 30-second rescue. And they should. But the harder mission was the quiet one. The one with no stun grenades, no team, no training manual.

The hardest enemy to kill is the one inside you. And sometimes the bravest thing a warrior can do is put the weapon down.

Have you ever had a moment where you realised the real battle wasn't the one everyone could see?