Trump and North Korea
In January 1968, North Korea violated international law by capturing the USS Pueblo as she sailed in international waters.
North Korea’s ruler then was Kim Jong-Un’s grandfather.
He ordered the imprisonment of the Pueblo’s 82-man crew.
They were starved and tortured.
To save the crew from execution, the crew’s captain, Commander Lloyd Bucher, agreed to make a televised ‘confession.’
The captain and crew were hauled in front of a staged press conference.
But it was delightful.
The captain used an American phrase made popular by the TV show “Laugh-In,” blaming the Pueblo’s alleged transgression on ‘the fickle finger of fate.’
And as the captain spoke, the men displayed their middle finger, telling their unknowing captors it was a Hawaiian good luck sign.
The crew’s imprisonment lasted for eleven months.
Their release came just before Christmas, when the US agreed to sign a statement acknowledging ‘wrongdoing.’
But North Korea refused to return the ship.
And in 2013, Kim Jong-Un put the Pueblo on display in the country’s Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum in Pyongyang harbor.
There, a video about the 1968 incident proclaims, "The US imperialists went down on their knees… before the independent army and people of Korea and signed the instrument of surrender."
While the Pueblo crew languished in prison in 1968, Donald Trump graduated from college and obtained his bone spur draft exemption.
Fifty-one years later, he traveled to the Korean DMZ to shake the hand of the man who refuses to return America’s ship.
[The Pueblo is the only US ship in captivity.]
And since then, Trump has often mentioned the ‘big, beautiful love letter’ he received from Kim while he served as president.
In recent days, a high-level North Korean defector has said North Korea hopes Trump returns to the White House.
They intend to ask Trump to lift sanctions, remove North Korea’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, and provide economic aid.
‘Trump’s return to power would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for North Korea’, the defector said.
Meanwhile, North Korea has entered into a new strategic agreement with Russia.
North Korea has received financial and technical assistance for its missile program in return for giving Russia artillery shells, ballistic missiles and ground troops for Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Korean history adds another layer of complication to US-North Korea relations.
While combat on the Korean peninsula ended in 1953, peace has never come.
The goal tens of thousands of young Americans died for over there in the early 1950s remains elusive.
There may be a thousand reasons not to vote for Trump in November.
North Korea should be one of them.
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I’ll see you tomorrow.
— Brenda
Banner image: Trump and Kim Jong-Un at the Korean DMZ, June 20, 2019.
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