The 15 years following the truce that ended the
Korean War were marked by deep tensions. The armistice agreement,
signed by North Korea and China on the communist side and South
Korea and United Nations forces on the other side, never evolved
into a formal peace treaty. The armistice was repeatedly broken,
with both sides attempting infiltration and plotting coups.
Representatives for North Korea and the U.N. command team
meet in the demilitarized border zone to
negotiate the release of the USS Pueblo's
crew. The crew was held hostage by the North Koreans for 11 months. (National Archives and
Records Administration; U.S. Navy)
On January 23, 1968, a United Nations command team called
for a meeting in the DMZ with South Korean and North Korean
officials. The meeting was intended to diffuse tensions caused
by an infiltration attempt on the part of the North Koreans
the previous day in Seoul. (Thirty-one agents were believed
to be planning an attack on the presidential palace.)
But instead, the U.N. team was diverted to a surprising new
crisis on the peninsula. Four North Korean patrol boats had
surrounded the 906-ton USS Pueblo off the eastern coast of North
Korea. The Pueblo was part of Operation Clickbeetle,
the code name for electronic and radio intelligence-gathering
by small noncombatant naval ships off the coast of North Korea.
The ship had been deployed to the coast of North Korea, where
the crew was supposed to gather intelligence without interference.
It was supposed to remain in international waters beyond the
12-mile limit claimed by North Korea.
Crewmen of the captured USS Pueblo
leave a U.S. Army bus at the United Nations Advance Camp,
following their release by the North Koreans, December 23,
1968. (National Archives and Records Administration; U.S.
After several warnings to the spy ship, North Koreans took
positions on the fleeing vessel's bow, beam and quarter. As
the North Koreans closed in, 83 Americans aboard raced to destroy
classified documents and electronic devices. A member of the
crew radioed that the Pueblo had come to a stop and her
radio was going off air. Under North Korea's order, the ship
pulled into the port of Wonsan.
Pentagon officials scrambled to come to grips with what had
happened. A U.S. ship hadn't been captured by an enemy state
since the Napoleonic wars more than 150 years before.
Ever since the day the ship was captured, U.S. and North Korean
officials have differed fiercely over the USS Pueblo's position
when it was captured. The United States has maintained that
the ship was in international waters; the North Koreans insist
that the Americans had illegally entered their territory.
The standoff over the facts didn't help the cause of the Pueblo's
82 surviving crewmembers. They were held in captivity in North
Korea for 11 months. (One crewmember was killed when the North
Koreans ambushed the ship.) They were finally released when
U.S. Army Major General Gilbert Woodward, who represented the
United Nations command team as chief negotiator to free the
crewmembers, signed a document confessing to espionage.
Families of the USS Pueblo crew
await their loved ones' arrival at Naval Air Station Miramar,
California, December 24, 1968. (National Archives and Records
Administration; U.S. Navy)
The document Woodward signed said, in part, that "the government
of the United States of America ... shoulders full responsibility
and solemnly apologizes for the grave acts of espionage committed
by the U.S. ship against the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea after having intruded into the territorial waters of the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea and gives firm assurance
that no U.S. ships will intrude again."
But Woodward disavowed the confession even as he delivered
it: "The position of the U.S. government with regard to the
Pueblo has been that the ship was not engaged in illegal
activity ... The document which I am going to sign was prepared
by the North Koreans and is at variance with the above position.
My signature will not and cannot alter the facts. I will sign
the documents to free the crew and only to free the crew."
In Washington, the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson
also quickly repudiated any guilt in the incident. But Johnson
never pursued retaliation against North Korea. He was committed
to escalating the U.S. response in Vietnam, where more than
a half-million American soldiers now served.
Still, after the USS Pueblo debacle, the United States
ditched such eavesdropping missions.
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1968: Spy Ships and Infiltrators
1948: From Independence to War
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