![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP18024398778081.jpg.jpg\")
As Jang Un Hye, a military guide who has been assigned to the museum for the past two years, leads the way through the vessel, she points to bullet holes and shrapnel marks that have been freshly painted a bright red. She looks down with satisfaction at a crumpled American flag kept in a glass case on the bridge and waves her hand at copies of confessions hanging on the wall and placed atop metal tables that she says were handwritten by the Pueblo\u2019s captain and crew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
North Korea claims the ship entered its territorial waters when it was attacked and Jang stands by a map near the ship\u2019s communication room that she says shows a dozen or so incursions made by the Pueblo before its capture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ship\u2019s other visuals are mostly intended to underscore the American humiliation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are grainy black-and-white photos of the captain signing a confession and of crewmembers walking across the Demilitarized Zone after their release nearly a year later. The Pueblo\u2019s cramped mess hall is used to show a short propaganda video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Pueblo was ill-equipped for the fight it got on Jan. 23, 1968. One U.S. sailor was killed when the ship was strafed by machine gun fire and boarded. The 82 survivors were taken prisoner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But, coming at the height of the Cold War, its capture escalated quickly and threatened to become a serious military conflict. The U.S. sent carriers to the Sea of Japan and demanded the captives be released. North Korea, for its part, forced members of the crew, who say they were beaten frequently, to make public confessions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The incident came to an end on Dec. 21, 1968, when Maj. Gen. Gilbert H. Woodward, the chief U.S. negotiator, signed a statement acknowledging that the Pueblo had \u201cillegally intruded into the territorial waters of North Korea.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He disavowed that before and afterward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the official tours of the Pueblo today, however, that\u2019s not part of the narrative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fifty years after it was seized by North Korea, the USS Pueblo is the only U.S. Navy ship held captive by a foreign government. And though mostly forgotten in the United States, the \u201cPueblo Incident\u201d for North Korea remains a potent symbol of military success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":103743,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":8,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[8,12,65],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1104],"class_list":["post-68986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flashpoints","category-news","category-your-navy"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"R2WUA7ZGYBGA3DXUZNHOZDNR5Y","arc_canonical_url":"\/flashpoints\/2018\/01\/25\/captured-uss-pueblo-displayed-as-north-korean-propaganda-prize\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP18024398750440.jpg.jpg\")