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Senator suggests deal for return of Pueblo

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.