Bill Richardson tours captured U.S. ship on visit to North Korea

He’s there with Bush’s blessing (and Bush’s NK negotiatior) so let’s not rehash the Logan Act or start in with the Hanoi Jane analogies.

The NorKs wanted them to see the boat, they figured if they want cooperation on what they’re there for they’d better see the boat, so they saw the boat.

Richardson, a Democratic presidential candidate who is in North Korea this week to collect the remains of U.S. servicemen killed in the Korean War, said the tour of the ship was “unpleasant.”

“Despite the success with the remains, this is a relationship with a lot of tension, and this shows that,” Richardson told reporters after the tour.

He called the Pueblo visit “a lot of propaganda, but we’re guests here.”

Principi, who was a Navy officer at the time of the Pueblo’s capture, said it was disconcerting to have something from that era still on display.

“It’s very unpleasant to hear the assertion of continued aggression against the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea,” Principi said.

Pak In Ho, the North Korean naval colonel who led the U.S. delegation on the tour, told the Americans that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il had personally decreed that the ship should be used for “an anti-American education.”

“This spy ship, the Pueblo, is considered a vivid, living example of such hostile policies by the U.S. against the DPRK,” Pak said through an interpreter, using the formal name of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

FYI, the Pueblo was captured by DPRK naval forces in 1968 after it allegedly strayed into NK coastal waters; according to Navy records, it was in international waters at the time. The crew was seized and taken back to the mainland for debriefing. This scenario should, perhaps, sound familiar in light of recent current events.

The Pueblo, however, didn’t surrender until it was attacked by four torpedo boats, two sub chasers, and two MiGs. The crew was starved and tortured, and the torture got worse after they took some of the sweeter anti-propaganda photos of all time. This part of the scenario should sound … unfamiliar.

The NorKs are allied with Iran on nuclear matters and in their Axis of Evil status so I wonder if this was their way of ratcheting up the west’s embarrassment over the British sailors: not only reminding us that they got away with it at America’s expense (and have the souvenir to prove it) long before Iran pulled it on the UK, but forcing the U.S. delegation to revisit the humiliation by touring the ship — which is still commissioned, by the way. Amazing that they’d consider the occasion of a diplomatic visit an opportunity to gloat, but that’s the hermit kingdom for you. Amazing too that there are no actual pics of this propaganda masterpiece on the wires right now. Maybe the photographers accompanying the delegation didn’t want to dignify such a shameful spectacle by treating it as “news.”

No, seriously, though, I wonder why there are no photos.

Exit question: If this incident rates a 3 or 4 on the disgrace-ometer, what does Steny Hoyer’s meeting with a leader of the world’s foremost Islamist organization rate? 7? 8?

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