Regarding the USS Pueblo. It is currently at dock in Pyongyang, North
Korea, and for about 50 years has been the only actively commissioned
United States Naval vessel held in captivity. The North Koreans have
offered several times to return the ship as part of a broader package
of establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries, but
the U.S. has always refused.

The USS Pueblo was also launched in 1944 as the U.S. Army cargo ship
FS-344. In 1966 it was transferred to the U.S. Navy where it was then
renamed as the third USS Pueblo. Finally commissioned in 1967, the
ship also received the subtitle AGER-2 as it became the second
military vessel assigned to Auxiliary General Environmental Research,
a spy ship program run jointly by the United States Navy and the
National Security Agency (NSA). In January of 1968, this USS Pueblo
was on assignment in the Sea of Japan, due east of the North Korean
port of Wonson. As part of Operation Clickbeetle, the captain and crew
were charged with spying on Soviet Naval maneuvers and North Korean
electronic signal activity. To bolster their opportunity for success,
U.S. authorities granted the vessel permission to penetrate within one
nautical mile of the communists' shoreline, even though international
treaties specified a twelve nautical mile limit. On the 23rd of that
month, amidst heightened tensions from preceding skirmishes of the
Third Korean-American War (1966 to 1970), Pyongyang dispatched four
torpedo boats, two sub chasers, and two MiG-21 jet fighters to
commandeer the U.S. spy ship. Though Washington vehemently complained
that their vessel was boarded outside the already violated twelve
nautical mile international limit, the North Koreans took little
notice as they had long declared a fifty nautical mile territorial
boundary from their shores. During the chase which preceded their
capture, the crew of the USS Pueblo unsuccessfully focused their
efforts on destroying the massive volumes of data they held on board,
even to the point of not returning gun fire that had killed one
American sailor: Seaman Duane Hodges. Ultimately, the vessel and crew
were finally seized and taken to the port of Wonson. From there the
naval prisoners were transferred to two different POW camps, spending
the next eleven months being subjected to what U.S. President George
W. Bush would later described in September of 2006 as valid,
aggressive, alternative, interrogation techniques (i.e. - torture).
The eighty-two surviving crew members, along with the body of Seaman
Hodges, were returned to American authorities over the DMZ on December
23rd, 1968.

A story about this has been placed online at:

www.TheDragonOption.com

For the USS Pueblo, see this topic:

www.TheDragonOption.com/chapter4.html#topic15