How the USS Pueblo incident created the enduring formula for US-N. Korea relations

Posted on : 2021-10-10 10:41 KST Modified on : 2021-10-10 10:41 KST
A hostile crisis situation leading to dialogue and negotiations is a pattern that has repeated, without exception, during all three of the North Korean nuclear crises — its origins can be found in the 1968 capture of the USS Pueblo by North Korea
The USS Pueblo, which was dragged into the Wonsan Harbor on Jan. 23, 1968, is displayed along North Korea’s Taedong River, near a memorial for the General Sherman incident, and has been used as an educational site to teach North Koreans about national security since its capture. (Hankyoreh photo archives)
The USS Pueblo, which was dragged into the Wonsan Harbor on Jan. 23, 1968, is displayed along North Korea’s Taedong River, near a memorial for the General Sherman incident, and has been used as an educational site to teach North Koreans about national security since its capture. (Hankyoreh photo archives)

At 12:27 pm on Jan. 23, 1968, the USS Pueblo, a spy ship for the US navy, was cruising at some distance from the coastal city of Wonsan, North Korea, when it was approached by two small ships from the North Korean navy, a submarine chaser (SO-1) and a torpedo boat (P-4).

When the North Koreans ordered the Pueblo to stand down and threatened to open fire if it refused, the Pueblo’s captain, Lloyd Bucher, protested that the ship was in international waters. With that, he ordered the ship to withdraw from the area as quickly as possible.

But in the end, it wasn’t quick enough. The Pueblo had a top speed of 13 knots, while the North Korean submarine chaser could travel at 29 knots, and the torpedo boat at 50 knots. After concluding that he couldn’t get away, Bucher followed the North Korean ships to the port of Wonsan.

When Bucher halted the Pueblo in an attempt to destroy classified documents, there was a hail of bullets from the submarine chaser, killing one American crewman on the spot.

North Korean personnel boarded the Pueblo at 2:32 pm. The US spy ship had been captured by the North Korean navy. That was the first time an American naval vessel had been captured in 153 years, the most recent at the time being when the USS President was taken by the British navy in New York Harbor in 1815.

Two days earlier, armed commandos from North Korea had made a shocking attempt to assassinate then South Korean president Park Chung-hee. The commandos were gunned down at the historic gate of Changuimun — dangerously close to South Korea’s presidential mansion known as the Blue House. Many were terrified that war was about to resume on the Korean Peninsula, only 15 years after the armistice.

“1968 was the year when we came closest to war since the Korean War,” wrote Kim Yeon-chul, former Unification Minister for South Korea, in his book, “Seventy Years of Dialogue.”

But there was no war in 1968. None of the commanders-in-chief of the countries concerned — neither Lyndon Johnson in the US, Kim Il-sung in North Korea, Leonid Brezhnev in the Soviet Union, nor Mao Zedong in China — had any intention of going to war.

In the days after the Pueblo’s capture, the US public voiced fervent support for a military response. Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan all clamored for action.

But Johnson decided to resolve the situation quickly through peaceful means following a high-level meeting that lasted for two days, on Jan. 24-25. Johnson said he would use all available means, but that didn’t include going to war. He had little taste for entangling the US in another war while its soldiers were already trudging through the jungles of Vietnam.

Nor were there any signs that North Korea was planning or preparing for war. The CIA noted that the North hadn’t been importing extra food or medical supplies and that its volume of trade was stable.

Declassified government documents show that Clark Clifford, who had been appointed to replace Robert McNamara as US Secretary of Defense, made the following remark: “I am deeply sorry about the ship and the 83 men, but I do not think it is worth a resumption of the Korean War.”

The US sought a balanced approach. The USS Enterprise, a carrier that had departed Japan for Vietnam, was diverted to the Korean Peninsula as a show of force. But on Jan. 25 — the third day after the incident — Johnson told Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin that the US didn’t want military tensions to rise on the Korean Peninsula.

At the time, the US regarded the Soviet Union as a knowing accomplice. In a meeting shortly after the incident, McNamara flatly said the Soviets had been informed in advance.

But that was just conjecture. In fact, the Soviets strove to prevent the Pueblo incident from escalating into all-out war. That April, Leonid Brezhnev expressed irritation with the North Koreans for trying to exploit their treaty to involve the Soviet Union in the incident and for seeking Soviet support for undisclosed machinations.

The Soviets conveyed to North Korea their disapproval of the capture of the Pueblo, describing it as an “immoderate measure.” The Soviets noted that, under Article 23 of the Geneva Convention, military vessels that trespass in territorial waters are to be removed to international waters, not seized.

What did the North aim at accomplishing?

Why did the North Koreans capture the Pueblo? Several theories have been raised, but none of them have been established as fact. What is clear, however, is that the capture was neither carefully planned nor entirely spontaneous.

The Pueblo steamed out of the Japanese Sasebo Port at 6 am on Jan. 11 — just 12 days before the incident — and traveled north to Primorsky Krai, in the Soviet Union. From there, it headed south, reaching the vicinity of Chongjin, a port in North Korea, on Jan. 15.

According to a report prepared for the US Congress, one of the Pueblo’s missions was to confirm how the North Koreans and Soviets would each respond to an intelligence-gathering vessel that was openly and actively carrying out reconnaissance on the Soviet navy in the vicinity of North Korea.

For that reason, the Pueblo’s course was provocative, and North Korea may indeed have been provoked.

On the surface, North Korea and the US traded harsh words, but they were actually seeking an opportunity to negotiate. The US was the first to reveal its hand.

During the 261st meeting of the UN Command Military Armistice Commission (UNCMAC) at Panmunjom on Jan. 24 — one day after the incident — Rear Adm. John Smith, the senior deputy from the UN Command, asked North Korea to release the ship and sailors and to offer an apology. Smith then handed a document containing those demands to Maj. Gen. Pak Jung-guk, the North Korean delegate, and emphasized that the US government was sending a warning to the North Korean authorities.

That signaled that the US government, rather than the UN Command, was taking direct action to resolve the issue. The North Koreans were certainly sharp enough to pick up on that signal.

Following closed-door negotiations, North Korea and the US initiated bilateral talks on Feb. 2. Smith said that, as the senior delegate to UNCMAC, he had plenary power to represent the US government in the negotiations over the incident. Smith’s strange introduction of himself as someone representing the US government, but not a representative of the US government, was a compromise between the US government’s official position that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was not legal under international law and its need to find a solution through bilateral negotiations.

Another reason that the capture of the Pueblo led to what was effectively the first bilateral negotiations between the US and North Korea was the fact that the Chinese military delegate was boycotting UNCMAC because of a spat between North Korea and China following China’s Cultural Revolution. When the Red Guards sharply criticized Kim Il-sung, Kim attacked the Chinese as being “great-power chauvinists” in a public speech. That led to a battle of nerves between the two countries, which both recalled their ambassadors to each other.

After more than 10 months of wrangling, North Korea agreed to release all the Pueblo crew in exchange for an apology from the US. “We could not apologize for actions which we did not believe took place,” said US Army Maj. Gen. Gilbert H. Woodward, adding, “I will sign the document to free the crew and only to free the crew.” After that, he signed the “apology” that North Korea had drafted.

In its desperate battle for recognition from the US, North Korea wanted the US government’s signature, but for the US, the statement of denial was the important thing. This has been called a “repudiated apology.”

In the world of diplomacy, people frequently deceive themselves in an attempt to avoid conflict. That’s eloquently illustrated by the expression, “agree to disagree.”

At any rate, the 82 surviving crew members from the Pueblo, and the remains of the deceased, passed over the Bridge of No Return, at Panmunjom, on Dec. 23, 1968, on their way home to the US. That was shortly after Richard Nixon was elected US president.

What the Pueblo incident means for today

North Korea never did return the hull of the Pueblo to the US. After being taken to the port of Wonsan in 1968, the Pueblo was then moored at the Taedong River, in Pyongyang, alongside a memorial to the General Sherman, an American merchant ship that was destroyed in the 19th century. Even today, the Pueblo is used to educate North Koreans about national security issues.

The reason I have rehashed this incident from half a century ago at such great length is because its details serve as a historical archetype of conflict and negotiations between the US and North Korea over the nuclear issue, which has threatened peace on the Korean Peninsula for more than three decades now.

In short, “the two countries’ negotiations over the Pueblo constitute the origin of the bizarre truism in North Korea-US relations that dialogue only begins when a hostile crisis situation has been created” as Hong Seok-ryul writes in his book, “Hysteria of Division.”

A hostile crisis situation leading to dialogue and negotiations is a pattern that has repeated, without exception, during all three North Korean nuclear crises: the first crisis in the 1990s, the second in the 2000s, and the third in the 2010s and 2020s.

There are two problems here: one is that the US’ apparent lack of interest in finding a solution, and the other is North Korea’s lack of the wisdom or ability to arouse the US’ interest aside from self-destructive and threatening military behavior that takes everyone hostage.

Considering that there’s no river running from Wonsan to Pyongyang, it’s reasonable to wonder how exactly the Pueblo, which was captured off the coast of Wonsan, was transported to the shore of the Taedong River, in Pyongyang. While it’s widely presumed that the ship was transported overland, perhaps on a train, North Korea has never provided a formal explanation.

A former senior official who was closely involved in negotiations with North Korea once told me that the Pueblo was not moved overland, but by sea — via the East Sea (Sea of Japan), the Jeju Strait, the West Sea (Yellow Sea), and the Taedong River.

The Pueblo is still remembered today. On Feb. 24, 2021, the US District Court for Washington, D.C., ordered the North Korean authorities to pay US$2.3 billion in damages to the crew members of the USS Pueblo and their family members, as well as the families of the deceased.

Ever since former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited Pyongyang in October 2000 in a failed attempt to set up the first North Korea-US summit, North Korea hasn’t concealed its hope of using the hull of the Pueblo as leverage for normalizing relations with the US in each moment of crisis.

Will the Pueblo, in its berth on the banks of the Taedong River, serve as a catalyst for normalizing relations between the two sides through a meeting between Kim Jong-un and Joe Biden? Or will it prove to be the flashpoint of another clash or conflict?

Lee Je-hun
Lee Je-hun

By Lee Je-hun, senior staff writer

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]

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