USS Pueblo

Factual Questions
1

In the late sixties the USS Pueblo was capture by the North Vietnamese. They claimed it had entered their territorial waters to spy on them. The US claimed that it was captured (illegaly) in international waters.

Is there any proof as to what really happened? Why would the Pueblo intentionally intrude into their waters? And if it didn’t, what where the Koreans trying to accomplish by capturing it?

Story according to the crew: http://www.usspueblo.org/v2f/incident/incidentframe.html

Funny “confession” written by the ships capain: http://www.usspueblo.org/v2f/incident/incidentframe.html

That confession is really funny. He was trying to show that he was coerced into writing it by using ridiculous phrases like calling the american eagle “The Great Speckled Bird”.

2

Wasn’t it actually captured by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea?

The Mayaguez (sp?) was captured by the Vietnamese or Cambodians after the waw, though, and I think we actually sent in troops to get it back–with about as many casualties as sailors.

3

I believe the following is fairly accepted by historians:

  1. The Pueblo was a spy ship.
  2. It was outside N. Korean waters when it was captured.
  3. There’s fault enough on both sides.

Elmer J. Fudd,
Millionaire.
I own a mansion and a yacht.

4

Here’s a shortcut to the confession: http://www.usspueblo.org/v2f/captivity/bucherconfess.html

Waaa! Everybody ignores me 'cept the Republicans!

5

The confession really is funny. It’s sort of inspiring to think that someone in such a horrible situation could retain such a sense of humour.

I can see reasons why the Pueblo might intrude in DPRK national waters, but I can also see reason the North Koreans might have captured the vessel on the high seas. IIRC, the Pueblo did mainly electronic surveillance (radio interception), and perhaps they could get a better signal by hugging the coast. Not extremely likely, but conceivable. A lot of electronic intelligence ships get lots of great data on the high seas, so I don’t know why this incident would be an exception, but I accept that there might be some anomoly in the signal which drew the Pueblo closer in.

More likely, the Koreans just got sick of the Americans spying on them off their coast, and decided to get nasty. They probably didn’t have encoding technology even approaching what the NSA and the Navy had, and they couldn’t very well kiss their radio technology goodbye, so they were in a bad situation where the Americans could hear everything they were saying. And there would be no shortage of U.S. allies who could speak the language - South Koreans.

So, the taking of the Pueblo was probably an act of war, one calculated to chasten and embarass the United States, without being egregious enough for the U.S. to do anything really serious about it (like turning it into an all-out war). The U.S. had their hands tied in Vietnam, so it was natural for the DPRK to show its sympathies for an ally - namely, the North Vietnamese, by poking the Americans in the eye.

But I don’t mean to discount the possibility that either the Pueblo crew or the Koreans might have miscalculated the ship’s position. I don’t know enough to rule that out.

Waaa! Everybody ignores me 'cept the Republicans!

6

Don’t forget the famous photograph with the POW’s flipping the bird.

7

I have also read that the North Koreans got very pissed off when they found out how the word “paeon” is pronounced. I believe that word was used several times by the captured sailors and the pun was not discovered until much later.