{"id":4404,"date":"2020-01-26T15:40:31","date_gmt":"2020-01-26T06:40:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nedforney.com\/?p=4404"},"modified":"2021-01-22T09:09:43","modified_gmt":"2021-01-22T00:09:43","slug":"blue-house-raid-uss-pueblo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nedforney.com\/index.php\/2020\/01\/26\/blue-house-raid-uss-pueblo\/","title":{"rendered":"A Week of Terror in 1968"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\"US\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t“We thought the president there was a stooge, an American collaborator. I hated him.”
\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 – Kim Shin-jo, member of a North Korean commando team sent to assassinate the South Korean president in January 1968\n

On the afternoon of January 17, 1968, a 31-man, hand-picked team of North Korean commandos who had been training together for two years and were experts in knife fighting cut through fencing along the DMZ<\/a>, crossed the Imjin River, and set up camp on a nearby mountain.<\/p>\n

Their mission:\u00a0infiltrate South Korea’s Blue House (equivalent of the White House) and assassinate South Korean president Park Chung-hee. <\/p>\n

Kim Il-sung, the grandfather of North Korea’s current leader, Kim Jong-un, told his men that if all went well the Republic of Korea (ROK) would collapse, resulting in “a glorious revolution” that would see the unification of the Korean peninsula under the Kim regime.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A

A scenic representation of the commandos crossing the fence at the DMZ at the actual spot where the event took place (PC: Ned Forney).<\/p><\/div>\n

Two days later the commandos, wearing South Korean uniforms to avoid detection, were\u00a0\u00a0spotted by four South Korean brothers.\u00a0When one of the brothers grew suspicious and asked questions,\u00a0the four men were immediately surrounded, taken into custody, and threatened with death.<\/p>\n

Pretending to go along with a lengthy explanation by the commandos on how their mission would bring a new workers paradise to the people of South Korea, the brothers promised not to tell anyone of the infiltrators’ presence and were released.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As they had planned all along, they immediately reported the incident to the police. The well-trained commandos, however, had slipped into the night. There was no trace of them anywhere.<\/p>\n

\"The

The “Blue House,” or Cheong Wa Dae, is the official residence of the president of South Korea (PC: www.visitseoul.net).<\/p><\/div>\n

Despite increased security in and around Seoul, the commandos made it to within 350 yards of the Blue House before being discovered. In the intense firefight that followed, numerous ROK police and civilians were killed in a flurry of gunfire and exploding grenades. One North Korean commando was captured but immediately committed suicide. The rest of the infiltrators escaped.<\/p>\n

Attack on the USS Pueblo<\/strong><\/h2>\n

On January 23, as South Korean officials hunted down the remaining commandos, the North Koreans, outraged that the assassination attempt had failed, attacked the US Navy spy ship, USS Pueblo<\/em> (AGER-2), claiming falsely that it was in North Korean waters. After firing on the ship with 57mm cannons and killing an American sailor, the communists boarded the Pueblo<\/em>, captured her crew, and then began blindfolding and beating them.<\/p>\n

\"The

The USS Pueblo on Jan. 23, 1968 (PC: Bettman File)<\/p><\/div>\n

The 82 captured Americans spent the next 335 days locked in North Korean prisons, where they would endure torture, mock executions, and almost constant interrogations and communist indoctrination lectures.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Seoul, meanwhile, the manhunt had come to an end. By the last day of January, all but two of the North Korean commandos were dead. One had made it back to North Korea, where he became an immediate national celebrity and later a high-level military leader and politician, and the other was captured.<\/p>\n

\"Corpses

Corpses of North Korean commandos killed during the Blue House raid, Jan. 25, 1968 (PC: National Archives)<\/p><\/div>\n

“I Tried to Kill the President”<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The captured North Korean commando, Kim Shin-jo, was interrogated for more than a year and released when it was discovered that he’d never actually fired a shot or hurt anyone during the assassination attempt. <\/p>\n

In an extraordinary twist of fate, he\u00a0became a South Korean citizen, married, and had two children.\u00a0When his wife, a devout Christian, eventually convinced him to attend church with her, he experienced an overwhelming sense of calm and peace and became a Christian.<\/p>\n

\"Kim

Kim Shin-jo at a police station in Seoul after being captured, Jan. 22, 1968 (PC: AP)<\/p><\/div>\n

“I tried to kill the president,” he later told CNN<\/a>. “I was the enemy. But the South Korean people showed me sympathy and forgiveness. I was touched and moved.”<\/p>\n

Kim’s family, however, was not shown the same mercy by his former countrymen. Several years after the raid, the communists executed his parents and six siblings who were still living in North Korea. “I was deemed a defector, and they executed my family,” he recalled in a 2018 interview<\/a> with NBC News.<\/p>\n

Postscript<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Kim Shin-jo became a Presbyterian minister in 1977 and is still alive today. <\/p>\n

“I lived, but my heart aches when I think about my parents and my siblings who I left behind,” he told NBC. “This is something I have to carry with me to my grave.”<\/p>\n

\"Kim

Kim Shin-jo in an interview with NBC in 2018 (PC: Mac William Bishop, NBC News)<\/p><\/div>\n

President Park Chung-hee, whose wife was inadvertently killed in an assassination attempt on him in 1974, was assassinated by the head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) in 1979. His daughter, Park Geun-hye, the 11th president of South Korea, is in jail on corruption charges.<\/p>\n

The USS Pueblo<\/em> remains in North Korean to this day. It is moored on a river in Pyongyang as part of the “Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum.” Tens of thousands of school children and adults visit the Pueblo<\/em> every year to learn about the “evils” committed by the United States.<\/p>\n

\"Released

Released crewmen of the USS Pueblo are escorted by military police upon their arrival at the U.S. Army 121st Evacuation Hospital at Ascom City, South Korea, on Dec. 23, 1968. (PC: AP)<\/p><\/div>\n

Twenty-six South Koreans and three Americans died during the Blue House Raid. The US soldiers, Sgt. Paul Martin, Pvt. Salvador Mojica and the third (whose name the author wasn’t able to find), were killed in firefights with the commandos attempting to cross the DMZ and return to North Korea.<\/p>\n

Since the signing of the Korean War armistice in 1953, approximately 90 Americans and 40 South Korean KATUSA soldiers have been killed on active duty in Korea, many on the DMZ. They are memorialized on a monument that was erected at Yongsan Garrison in Seoul in 2012.<\/p>\n

Lest we forget.<\/p>\n

\"This

This monument was erected in 2012 in Korea in honor of the 130 American and KATUSA (Korean Augmentees to the US Army) servicemen who have been killed in active combat in Korea since the Korean War armistice was signed in 1953 (PC: Ashley Rowland, Stars and Stripes, June 2012).<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"

Park Chung-hee (left), his wife Yuk Young-soo (top right), and daughter Park Guen-hye (bottom right) (PC: public domain)<\/p><\/div>\n\t

Top\/Feature photo: <\/strong>US Soldiers patrol the Korean DMZ, November 1969 (PC: AP)<\/p>\n\t