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A North Korean cargo vessel used to transport coal was seized in violation of international sanctions against the rogue regime, the U.S. Justice Department announced Thursday, just hours after the hermit kingdom fired two suspected short-range missiles. The 17,061-ton vessel, called the Wise Honest, is one of North Korea’s largest bulk carriers used to illicitly ship coal from North Korea and deliver heavy machinery to the Hermit Kingdom, officials said. U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said this is the first time a North Korean cargo ship was seized for violating international sanctions. “This sanctions-busting ship is now out of service,” Assistant...

Saturday, in Pittsburgh, a Sabbath celebration at the Tree of Life synagogue became the site of the largest mass murder of Jews in U.S. history. Eleven worshippers were killed by a racist gunman. Friday, we learned the identity of the crazed criminal who mailed pipe bombs to a dozen leaders of the Democratic Party, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. From restaurants to Capitol corridors, this campaign season we have seen ugly face-offs between leftist radicals and Republican senators. Are we more divided than we have ever been? Are our politics more poisoned? Are we living in what...

The USS Constitution, the oldest commissioned ship in the Navy, sits in Boston, revered by sailors and history buffs. The second-oldest ship, the USS Pueblo, floats at a river dock in Pyongyang, still a hostage more than 50 years after North Korea seized it in a January 1968 raid in the frigid waters of the East Sea off the Hermit Kingdom’s northeastern coast. Calls from the surviving crew to bring the ship back have amounted to naught. The Colorado legislature, protective of the ship named after one of its cities, also weighs in every year with a resolution calling for...

USS Pueblo (AGER-2) is a Banner-class environmental research ship, attached to Navy intelligence as a spy ship, which was attacked and captured by North Korean forces on 23 January 1968, in what is known today as the "Pueblo incident" or alternatively, as the "Pueblo crisis". The seizure of the U.S. Navy ship and its 83 crew members, one of whom was killed in the attack, came less than a week after President Lyndon B. Johnson's State of the Union address to the United States Congress, just a week before the start of the Tet Offensive in South Vietnam during the...

North Korea seized the USS Pueblo and accused the crew of spying. The crew was released 11 months later. NK, however, kept the vessel.

WASHINGTON — On Sunday, June 25, 1950, the Korean People's Army attacked across the 38th parallel, captured Seoul — capital of the Republic of Korea — and began driving south. The battered South Korean army and their U.S. military advisers quickly were pushed into the "Pusan Perimeter" on the southern tip of the peninsula — and U.S. President Harry Truman took the case to the United Nations Security Council. American leadership and the absence of the Soviet ambassador resulted in swift passage of Security Council Resolution 84. The measure — perhaps the last time in history that the U.N. acted...

Is Kim Jong-il building a new type of weapon? On Monday Seoul announced that the Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety had detected unusually high levels of xenon gas near the North Korea border on May 14. The concentration of xenon was eight times higher than normal, and the presence of the gas is indicative of nuclear activities. Because the wind was blowing south at the time, the source of the gas could not have been one of South Korea's nuclear plants. The xenon might have originated in China or Russia, but the most likely place was the land of unexplained...

DPRK is really rubbing it in the US's face with seeming impunity. Hmmmmm....I WONDER why THAT would be....There was a mass demonstration yesterday in North Korea by the Korean Workers Party in front of the 1967-seized USS Pueblo, docked in Pyongyang on a main river.I share HERE the link to the streaming video of this event. Hit the orange box with the arrow right below the Pueblo photo and the 1 minute video will stream. Stand it if you can.

When Ralph McClintock boarded the USS Pueblo in January 1968, he was planning for a three-week mission. Instead, the 24-year-old communications technician became a prisoner of war, a pawn in the Cold War sideshow that began with North Korea's capture of the Navy spy ship and imprisonment of its 82 crew members. Forty years later, as McClintock and the other survivors of the Pueblo prepare for a reunion, he's proud of his service and the bonds he made with his crew mates during 11 months in captivity. But the pride is tinged with bitterness. "We were treated as heroes when...

40 Years After Capture, USS Pueblo Crew Reunites JERICHO, Vt. — Ralph McClintock expected only a three-week mission when he boarded the USS Pueblo in January 1968. Instead, he and his shipmates became pawns in a Cold War sideshow when North Korea captured the Navy spy ship and imprisoned its 82 crew members. Some still suffer the physical effects of torture or malnutrition they suffered in 11 months of captivity. McClintock is proud of his service as a 24-year-old communications technician and the bonds he made with his crew mates, but that pride is tinged with bitterness. "We were treated...

PYONGYANG, North Korea — North Korea’s greatest propaganda trophy, a captured U.S. Navy spy ship, floats along the banks of the Taedong River, beckoning visitors aboard to see how this country once humiliated the United States. It's the USS Pueblo, whose captain surrendered without firing a shot to North Korea in 1968. Now a major tourist attraction, the vessel has become a floating symbol of anti-Americanism and the Cold War era. It draws some 1,000 people a day in organized tours designed to drum up patriotism. “It was a great victory for the Korean people to capture this ship,” said...

A senator sees it as a fair trade: a Korean battle flag captured in the 19th century for the USS Pueblo, taken in 1968. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., reintroduced a resolution Wednesday demanding that North Korea return the Pueblo, and he sent a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggesting she look into his proposed exchange. "Since the USS Pueblo bears the name of the town of Pueblo, Colorado, many in our state want to see the vessel returned to its proper home," Allard wrote. "North Korea continues to hint at the possible return of the captured U.S. Navy...

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson may have just ended his fledgling campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, shipwrecked on the rocky coast of North Korea. Although Richardson's trip to North Korea was authorized by the White House, how it played out must have come to a surprise to White House advisors, let alone to Richardson himself. The former energy secretary and popular New Mexico Democrat had gone to the hermit kingdom to claim the remains of six U.S. soldiers killed during the Korean War. He was also expected to deliver a tough message from Washington, that the United States expected...

N.Korea Told to Return Captured U.S. Navy Boat Former Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan asked North Korea to return the USS Pueblo to the U.S. during his visit to Pyongyang early March, a member of his entourage said Thursday. North Korea hijacked the U.S. Navy ship off the coast of Wonsan in January 1968, claiming it had crossed into North Korean waters. According to the aide, after looking at the Pueblo, which is on display near the Taedong River, the former prime minister told officials of the North’s Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation that the return of the captured ship...

On January 23 1968, the USS Pueblo was fired upon and seized by North Korea while in international waters. To this date, there has been some dispute as to whether the Pueblo may have briefly crossed into North Korean territorial waters during its intelligence-gathering. One sailor was killed during the attack and capture of the ship. The remaining men were imprisoned in North Korea (and frequently mistreated) until their release in December 1968. The release came about due to a US apology to the North Koreans for spying upon their country and in effect, promising never to do it again....

N.Korea claims capture of U.S. submersible By KWANG-TAE KIM, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 36 minutes ago North Korea claimed it has captured an unmanned U.S. submersible and put it on display in Pyongyang, a pro-North Korean newspaper in Japan said Monday. The U.S. dismissed the report. The small vessel was captured during a reconnaissance mission in waters off North Korea's eastern city of Hamhung, said the Choson Sinbo newspaper, which is published by a pro-North Korean association linked to the Pyongyang government. The newspaper report on its Web site, which is monitored in Seoul, was accompanied by a picture...

An international incident 38 years ago this month remains shrouded in mystery. On the bitterly cold morning of Jan. 23, 1968, an American intelligence vessel, USS Pueblo, was operating in international waters off the coast of North Korea. It was surrounded by four North Korean patrol boats, with two MiG aircraft flying overhead. The boats ordered the Pueblo to stop and let the North Koreans board. The order was refused. The Pueblo headed further out to sea. The North Korean boats immediately opened fire. Armed with only a 50-caliber gun secured from the freezing temperatures by a tarp, the Pueblo...

PYONGYANG, North Korea -- In the center of the North Korean capital floats a commissioned vessel of the U.S. Navy. The USS Pueblo, a spy ship captured by the North in 1968, is moored on a bank of the Daedong River. Despite quiet U.S. moves in recent years to secure its return, the vessel still functions as tourist attraction, trophy and symbol of anti-American struggle.

WASHINGTON -- Negotiations to eliminate North Korea's nuclear weapons remain in limbo, but the North Koreans are giving hints they might be ready to end another long-lingering problem with the United States by returning the captured spy ship USS Pueblo. They are setting an unlikely condition, though, for the return, considering hostile U.S.-North Korean relations: A visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice or another top- level American official. "It would be a gesture, but somebody needs to make a gesture," said Donald Gregg, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea who brought home the offer after a mid-August trip...

...The Pueblo is the Navy ship that North Korea seized in 1968 in waters off the country's east coast, setting off an international crisis. One American sailor was killed and 82 others were imprisoned for nearly a year and tortured into writing confessions. To signal that the confessions were forced, the sailors listed accomplices like the television character Maxwell Smart. When forced to pose for a photo, some crew members extended their middle fingers to the camera, explaining to the North Korean photographer that this was a Hawaiian good luck sign. After the photo was published and the North Korean...