The USS Pueblo crew members as they arrive in North Korea following their capture on Jan. 23, 1968 (KCNA/AP)
North Korea’s state media, Rodong Sinmun, recently celebrated the capture of the USS Pueblo (an unarmed U.S. Navy intelligence vessel) 55 years ago as a symbol that “victory always belongs to the DPRK and defeat always belongs to the United States in the confrontation between the two countries.” On January 23, 1968, 83 crew members aboard the USS Pueblo were captured and 82 were held hostage for 11 months in North Korea. The American ship had since turned into a war museum for local visitors in Pyongyang to admire their country’s resilience and combat readiness in eliminating invaders who attempt to attack their state integrity and internal affairs.
THE CAPTURE AND RELEASE OF SAILORS, BUT NOT THE SHIP
The USS Pueblo was embarking on an intelligence gathering mission as she sailed into the international waters off North Korea’s eastern coast. Unaware of rising tensions between the two Koreas following a failed invasion of the Blue House which killed 26 South Koreans only a few days prior, the USS Pueblo journeyed on and was attacked by North Korean military forces. The ship managed to contact U.S. forces in South Korea over the radio during a nearly three-hour standoff. However, upon realizing that they were abandoned and help was not coming, the USS Pueblo’s skipper, Lt. Cmdr. Lloyd “Pete” Bucher, made the unusual, but in hindsight the “right decision” to give up the ship, which ultimately saved their lives.
All hostages were tortured into falsely confessing that the USS Pueblo was a spy ship that had intruded in North Korea’s territorial waters. One crew member recalled that “My ear lobe on the right side was just hanging by a small part of the skin” after his head was beaten with rifle butts in one torture sessions. He also described sustaining lasting psychological impacts from hearing “every blow that every one of the sailors got” in the torture room next to his room. In the end, Lloyd Bucher confessed to espionage at a press conference in Pyongyang after being told that failure to do so would result in his crew members being executed one by one. The U.S. later signed a document drafted by North Korea, known as the three A’s: Admit wrongdoing, Apologize for it, Assure it will never happen again (later proclaimed by North Korea as the U.S.’s “instrument of surrender”), “to free the crew and only to free the crew.” On December 23, 1968, the 82 captives were repatriated to the U.S., leaving behind the USS Pueblo, along with ten encryption machines and thousands of top-secret documents seized from the ship.
Since the incident, crew members and their families have filed a lawsuit against North Korea for damages resulting from mental and physical abuse during their detention. In 2021, a U.S. federal district court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and ordered North Korea to pay over $2 billion USD or a minimum of $3.35 million USD for each crew member in compensation. However, North Korea was not represented in the case and it is highly unlikely that the victims could expect to recover any damages. Meanwhile, it is likewise improbable for the U.S. to expect compliance from North Korea with regards to its demand for the return of the USS Pueblo, especially when the ship is a token of triumph that echoes its vow to “wipe out the U.S. land” in response to intrusion.
NORTH KOREA’S STRATEGY
Since North Korea’s use of torture to obtain false confessions proved to be effective in the USS Pueblo incident, the same tactic continued to be used on detained U.S. citizens. For instance, Merrill Newman was forced to make a televised confession after mentioning to his tour guide that he fought in the Korean War on the “wrong side” in 2013. Similarly, Jeffrey Fowle was asked to “put some emotion into” his confession after being detained in North Korea for almost six months for leaving a Bible in a bathroom stall in 2014. While U.S. student, Otto Frederick Warmbier, who was arrested after attempting to steal a propaganda poster from his hotel begged for the DPRK’s forgiveness in a video released by state media, though he did not survive the ordeal and was “blind, deaf, and brain dead” when he returned home, passing away shortly afterwards.
While capturing U.S. citizens and collecting “declarations of defeat” might mark victory for North Korea over U.S. imperialism, it shows North Korea’s blatant disregard of not only its reputation on the global stage but more importantly, of human dignity.
