MY SAY: JANUARY 23, 1968 REMEMBER THE PUEBLO?
It was also an election year and Papa Kim, the present tyrant’s daddy humiliated America.
On January 23, 1968, the USS Pueblo, a Navy intelligence vessel, engaged in a routine surveillance of the North Korean coast was intercepted by North Korean patrol boats. The North Koreans captured lightly armed vessel and demanded surrender of its crew. The Americans attempted to escape, and the North Koreans opened fire, wounding the commander and two others. With capture inevitable, the Americans stalled for time, destroying the classified information aboard while taking further fire. Several more crew members were wounded.
The Pueblo was boarded and taken ashore where the crew was bound and blindfolded and transported to Pyongyang, where they were charged with spying within North Korea’s 12-mile territorial limit and imprisoned.
The United States maintained that the Pueblo had been in international waters and demanded the release of the captive sailors, but President Lyndon Johnson ordered no direct retaliation, but the United States began a military buildup in the area. North Korean authorities, coerced a confession and apology out of Pueblo commander Bucher, in which he stated, “I will never again be a party to any disgraceful act of aggression of this type.” The rest of the crew also signed a confession under threat of torture.
The prisoners were forced to study propaganda materials and beaten for straying from the compound’s strict rules. In August, the North Koreans staged a phony news conference in which the prisoners were to praise their humane treatment, but the Americans thwarted the Koreans by inserting innuendoes and sarcastic language into their statements. Some prisoners also rebelled in photo shoots by casually sticking out their middle finger; a gesture that their captors didn’t understand. Later, the North Koreans beat the Americans for a week.
On December 23, 1968, 11 months after the Pueblo‘s capture, U.S. and North Korean negotiators reached a settlement to resolve the crisis. Under the settlement’s terms, the United States admitted the ship’s intrusion into North Korean territory, apologized for the action, and pledged to cease any future such action.
That day, the surviving 82 crewmen walked one by one across the “Bridge of No Return” at Panmunjon to freedom in South Korea. Commander Bucher, who was a decorated Navy Commander in World War 11 , Korea and Vietnam, but suffered ignominy for his apology, died in January 2004.
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