Former prime minister, Lee Hae-chan recently asked the North Koreans to return the USS Pueblo to the United States. One would hope that return of the ship is on the list of preconditions for normalizing US-NK relations.
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12 Comments
It’s actually not a bad idea. It would be a symbolic gesture on their part…then again, symbolic gestures can be quickly made to be meaningless.
In other words, it’s crap. An insubstantial gesture that would become the basis for demands for real, substantial benefits - by both North and South - in return. So typical of the Korean mentalite. The bad faith of Korea’s commitment of Zaytun toilet plumbers raised to the level of utter farce.
I was just saying that receiving a gift from North Korea is not unlike accepting favor from a gangster, they both come with very heavy strings attached and you never know when they will be pulled.
You can extend that gangster metaphor to every single one of the North Korean regime’s actions without barely stretching it at all.
And in some cases such as their history of money laundering, kidnapping, assassination and extortion you don’t need to extend any sort of metaphor at all. Its reality baby!
I’ve never had my curiosity satisfied as to how and when the Pueblo got moved from Wonsan to its present location.
Anybody know? Did the North take it apart, move it overland, and then reassemble it where it is now, or is there some internal waterway across North Korea that enabled it to be sailed there more or less intact? This last sounds contrary to what I think I know of peninsular geography, but without a good topo map in front of me I suppose I can’t be sure.
If they sailed it all the way around the ROK, and we failed to mount an attempt to retake it, or even better, torpedo it — well, that was a real lick on “US”, almost as bad as the original incident.
While I cannot presume to speak for all Americans, I feel confident in saying that the US does not really want or need the Pueblo back. Thanks anyway, Mr. Lee. (Geez…)
Rust bucket, let them keep it.
Sounds like a good deal, Maybe South Korea can return Lee Hae-chan to Japan at the same time.
Paul, it was indeed towed around the Korean Peninsula,
I recall wondering why the US, and the US Navy in particular, allowed that to happen.
Screwed up the link on #10
Wiki entry on USS Pueblo
Actually the wiki entry that the Pueblo was towed around the peninsula through international waters is pure speculation. Other theories on this are that it was sent piecemeal across land by rail or towed through the rather extensive canal system that North Korea operates. Only one thing is certain: one day the Pueblo was in Wonsan and the next day it was missing only to appear a few weeks later in Nampo. No information was ever available to indicate that the operation was ever pending so that the vessel could be intercepted.