Senator suggests deal for return of Pueblo

 

By John Hoellwarth - Staff writer

Posted : Thursday Apr 19, 2007 5:42:11 EDT

 

A war trophy on display at the Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, Md., may be the key to securing the return of a Navy ship captured by North Korea nearly 40 years ago, Senator Wayne Allard, R-Colo., wrote in a March 18 letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

 

The technical research ship Pueblo is the only commissioned U.S. warship currently in foreign hands. It has been on display in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang since it was captured off the North Korean coast during an intelligence-gathering mission Jan. 23, 1968. North Korea held 82 of the ship’s crew members for 11 months.

 

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a briefing Tuesday that the Pueblo is U.S. property and that “it should be returned” because its seizure was “in violation of international law,” according to the department’s Web site.

 

McCormick said North Korea did not offer to return the ship when Gov. Bill Richardson, D-N.M., and former Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi visited Pyongyang early this month, and that “U.S. government members of the delegation declined an offer of a tour of the vessel,” according to the Web site.

 

Allard introduced legislation in the Senate on Wednesday demanding the Pueblo’s return. In his letter to Rice, Allard wrote, “North Korea continues to hint at the possible return of the captured U.S. Navy ship, and I ask that you take action at this opportune time. In exchange for the U.S.S. Pueblo, it has been suggested by my constituents that the United States return General Uh Je-Yeon’s flag to North Korea.”

 

Korean Gen. Uh Je-Yeon’s battle flag was captured by 105 Marines during an amphibious assault on his Kangwha Island stronghold at the mouth of the Han River that now separates North and South Koreas, according to an after-action report written by Asiatic Fleet commander Rear Adm. John Rodgers in 1871.

 

Je-Yeon’s bright yellow flag was one of 50 captured during the assault on Kangwha Island, according to Rodgers’ 1871 report. It is currently part of The United States Navy Trophy Flag Collection, which was “begun by an Act of Congress in 1814 and given to the care of the Naval Academy in 1849,” according to the Naval Academy Museum’s Web site.

 

At the time of the flag’s capture, North and South Korea were a single country called “Choson,” said Thomas Duvernay, a Korean history professor at Handong Global University in Pohang, South Korea.

 

He said the flag was symbolic of the commanding general and “in a way, the U.S. did Korea a favor, as it is, as far as I know, the only surviving Korean flag of its type.”

 

Duvernay called Je-Yeon’s battle flag “a national treasure of Korea.”

 

“Whereas it is currently housed in the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, rolled up on a bottom shelf of a display case, it would most certainly rate its own climate-controlled display case, if not its own exhibit room, at one of the service academy museums here in Korea,” he said.

 

Find article here.

An interesting proposal. Returning the Pueblo to the US would mean the loss of a symbol of their "victory" over the American capitalist running dogs (as Brains would say), but the return of the flag would be a similar gain for DPRK national pride (if there is such a thing).

An interesting proposal. Returning the Pueblo to the US would mean the loss of a symbol of their "victory" over the American capitalist running dogs (as Brains would say), but the return of the flag would be a similar gain for DPRK national pride (if there is such a thing).

 

The trade would definitely be a gesture in good faith. I just do not have a warm and fuzzy feeling that it would lead to any breakthrough with the NK leadership.

I believe that this is the incident from which the flag was captured.

 

Find article here.

Here is the "official" US Navy version

 

Enjoy

From Navy Times

 

Officials: Chances bleak for return of Pueblo

By Jennifer Talhelm - The Associated Press

Posted : Wednesday May 9, 2007 7:19:16 EDT

 

The State Department says it can’t negotiate the return of the surveillance ship Pueblo from North Korea while the U.S. is trying to get the communist nation to drop its nuclear ambitions.

 

A State Department official turned aside a suggestion by Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., that the U.S. demand the North Koreans return the Pueblo, taken in 1968. Allard suggested offering to swap a Korean flag captured in the 19th century in exchange for the ship.

 

Allard said his constituents are eager to see North Korean return the Pueblo, which is named for a Colorado town and is the only active-duty U.S. warship in the hands of a foreign power.

 

In a letter to Allard last week, assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, Jeffrey Bergner, said there are substantial barriers to getting the Pueblo back.

 

The two countries have no formal diplomatic relations, Bergner wrote. Also, the North Koreans haven’t offered to return the ship.

 

“The State Department sees little near-term prospect of negotiating the return of the USS Pueblo,” Bergner wrote.

 

Allard hasn’t given up, spokesman Steve Wymer said. Allard introduced the resolution in Congress last month demanding that North Korea return the Pueblo. He will wait and see what happens and follow up in a few weeks, Wymer said.

 

“Senator Allard wants the Pueblo back,” Wymer said. “Anything he can do to make that happen, he will look into it.”

 

The Pueblo was taken Jan. 23, 1968, after being sent defenseless on an intelligence-gathering mission off the North Korean coast.

 

Navy records show it was in international waters when it was captured, although the North Koreans insist it was inside the Korean coastal zone.

 

The North Koreans display the ship as a trophy. U.S. officials have been told that North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Il, decreed that the ship should be used for “an anti-American education.”

 

The U.S. government believes the Pueblo is being held illegally, Bergner wrote to Allard.

 

North Korea has occasionally suggested to private citizens that it would trade the ship for high-level bilateral talks or for large compensation, Bergner wrote. But the U.S. rejects the idea of such a trade because it would legitimize North Korea’s action.

 

Advocates in Colorado argue that the U.S. should at least return the flag to the Koreans as a show of good intentions.

 

The flag was captured from Korean Gen. Uh Je-yeon in an 1871 battle after American ships attempting to open Korea to trade invaded Kanghwa Island, outside Seoul. It is on display at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

From Navy Times

 

U.S. to return 19th-century flag to S. Korea

By Chris Amos - Staff writer

Posted : Thursday Oct 11, 2007 9:30:05 EDT

 

A Korean battle flag captured by a contingent of sailors and Marines more than a century ago will be returned to the Korean peninsula amid calls that North Korean officials return the favor by relinquishing a Navy ship captured during the Cold War.

 

The Navy recently negotiated a two-year lease with South Korea’s Cultural Heritage Administration that will allow the more than 13-by-13-foot flag of Gen. Uh Je-yeon to be returned home without violating an 1814 federal law requiring the Navy to hold onto captured battle flags and an 1849 executive order requiring that those flags be kept at the Naval Academy.

 

The lease will not be finalized until South Korean government representatives visit the Naval Academy next week to inspect the flag, according to a written statement released by Naval Academy spokeswoman Deborah Goode.

 

Navy officials were unable to say Wednesday what the South Korean government would pay for the right to lease the flag, but military historian Doug Sterner said the lease was renewable and doubted that the flag would ever return to the Naval Academy.

 

“The bureaucrats found a technical way to do the right thing. [The flag] belongs to the Korean people. It is part of their heritage,” Sterner said. He described the flag as the Korean equivalent of the American flag that flew over Fort McHenry, Md., and inspired Francis Scott Key to write “The Star Spangled Banner” during a British bombardment.

 

After Colorado Sen. Wayne Allard, a Republican, called for the flag to be returned, a South Korean government delegation traveled to the United States to meet with several congressional staff members and to view the flag at the Naval Academy museum. Boosters hope that, in exchange for it, the Navy will get back its only commissioned ship in foreign hands.

 

“The return of the USS Pueblo is long overdue,” Allard said in April. “North Korea has hinted at the possible return of the captured U.S. Navy ship, and it is my hope that they can take action at this opportune time. In speaking with some of my constituents, I believe there may be merit to the exchange of Gen. Uh Je-yeon’s flag for the USS Pueblo.”

Pueblo captured in 1968

 

But there is a catch. North Korea holds the Pueblo, and the United States has no diplomatic relations with its government. The Pueblo, a surveillance ship, was captured in 1968 by the North Korean navy, which said it strayed within North Korean territorial waters while conducting intelligence operations — an assertion Navy officials denied.

 

One U.S. sailor was killed when North Korean naval forces fired on the Pueblo before boarding it, binding its crew and towing the ship into port.

 

In response, President Johnson ordered the carriers Enterprise and Kitty Hawk and their strike groups to waters off the North Korean coast and mobilized thousands of reservists, but ultimately the U.S. did not intervene militarily.

 

Several months later, North Korean officials released the Pueblo’s crew, including the body of the dead sailor, but refused to return the ship. It now serves as an exhibit of “American aggression” on a pier in Pyongyang, North Korea, above the wreckage of another Navy ship, the General Sherman, which was sacked, burned and sunk by a Korean mob during an American military intervention in 1871.

 

During that same intervention, a group of Marines and sailors captured Gen. Uh Je-yeon’s flag after a group of 300 Korean soldiers fought to the death to prevent the Marines from advancing on Seoul from a nearby island.

 

In April, Allard sent a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asking her to encourage President Bush to consider returning the flag, which was kept with more than 300 other captured battle flags at the Naval Academy’s museum.

 

Sterner said he hoped American politicians show the same determination to get the Pueblo back that South Korean officials showed in their efforts to return a flag that was captured 136 years ago.

 

“There has been a general apathy to the issue from people at the State Department and in Congress,” he said. “This poses an open door. The outcome will depend on how those in the position to talk about it approach the open door.”