The Capture of the USS Pueblo: The Incident, the Aftermath and the Motives of North Korea

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1968 was a year filled with calamitous events that mired down the Lyndon Johnson presidency, not the least of which was the unheeded warnings leading up to the hijacking of the USS Pueblo, a lightly-armed spy ship cruising in international waters off North Korea. After a fierce, one-sided attack by the North Korean military, the U.S. Navy ship and its crew of eighty-three men were taken hostage, with the crew being imprisoned and tortured daily for nearly a year before being released.

How, and why did the Navy, the National Security Agency, and the Johnson administration place the Pueblo into such an untenable situation in the first place? And secondly, what could possibly have driven Kim Il-sung, the autocratic dictator of North Korea to take the gamble of hijacking a Navy ship belonging to the world’s most powerful nation? With extensive research, including summaries of White House meetings and conversations that followed the capture, The Capture of the USS Pueblo answers these questions and reviews the flawed leadership decisions and national events that led to the capture of the spy ship.

The capture of the USS Pueblo contains painfully-learned historical lessons, lessons that should be reviewed and heeded, especially as they relate to international events unfolding today.