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Flash Point North Korea: The Pueblo and EC-121 Crises

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This book provides a detailed chronology of the United States' response to the North Korean capture of the USS Pueblo and its crew in January 1968 (1 KIA and 82 POW) and the downing of a USN EC-121 electronic reconnaissance aircraft (31 KIA) on April 1969, less than four months after the release of Pueblo's crew. It does not recount more than the bare outlines of the two incidents themselves. I served in a Navy unit in Japan that was the permanent station for two of men killed in the EC-121 shoot down and participated in post-shoot down deployments in that theater during 1969-70.

Commander Mobley traces the U.S. response from Washington and in the Western Pacific to each event. Both incidents follow the same pattern: 1) initial confusion and inability to respond to the attacks in real time, 2) a rush to deploy military assets into the region, 3) a period of air and naval saber rattling in apparent preparation for retaliatory strikes against North Korea and 4) eventual standing down for a negotiated release of the Pueblo crew and, well, nothing at all for the EC-121 shoot down. Both events take place against a backdrop of a major war in Vietnam, where South Korea (ROK) and North Korea (KORCOMs) were both involved,. In both cases the North Koreans took, and won, the calculated gamble that the U.S. would not risk opening a "second front" in Northeast Asia. Lame U.S. response to both incidents, especially from the then-new Nixon administration in 1969, illustrate how unprepared the U.S. was (and is?) to engage the North Koreans. Oddly, in that era the ROK's forces were numerically much stronger than the KORCOM's and their martial governments were seemingly anxious. to attack - they, after all, suffered more casualties than the U.S., plus the KORCOMs tried to kill the ROK president in 1967.

As Mobley describes, but, in my opinion, fails to put into full context, the period from about November 1966 through mid-1969 saw hundreds of actions between KORCOM and both ROK and U.S. forces along the DMZ and along the ocean boundary on both the Sea of Japan and Yellow Sea coasts. These several hundred firefights are, along with the Pueblo and EC-121 incidents, referred to by participants as the Second Korean War, a small scale war that claimed more than 1,000 ROK and U.S. casualties (the approximately 186 U.S. casualties - 75 KIA and 111 WIA from all services - are a significantly higher casualty RATE than U.S. forces suffered during Desert Storm) and a larger number of KORCOM deaths (most fought to the death rather than be captured). By treating the Navy incidents as almost totally separate from the U.S. land and ROK land/sea incidents (which were NOT much publicized at the time since the media usually can't handle more than one story at a time, and Vietnam was the big story) Mobley does not capture the feel of the era that participants in-theater experienced. Also, Mobley glosses over or fails to describe some post-EC-121 U.S. responses in the theater.

Mobley illustrates how the ROK land forces at the time significantly outnumbered estimated KORCOM forces, although the KORCOMs had a numerical advantage in tactical aircraft. The U.S. air forces were pathetically small - although more could be brought in - and U.S. Army units were under strength, and remained so, due to needs in Vietnam. The big question remains, "What was North Korea trying to do?" The best Mobley comes up with, and it's as good an answer as anyone else has ever publicly provided, is that it was all related to some internal policy struggle among North Korean elites (hawks v. super hawks?) that died down when the risks began to outweigh the perceived internal political and propaganda advantages. Or perhaps, as one U.S. official remarked following a seemingly pointless KORCOM outrage, "That's just what they do."

I recommend this book to anyone interested in Cold War, Korean peninsula and Northeast Asian military and political history. The author is a former U.S. Navy officer who served in Korea and Northeast Asia a number of years after the incidents described in this book. His primary sources, documented in footnotes and a bibliography, are from declassified DOD and State Department records, Congressional hearing records and oral histories of senior civilian and military officials. The maps are inadequate in either detail or content to follow the progress of deployments or identify the location of some events. Several black and white photographs add little information since they are of well know people (e.g., President Johnson and Defense Secretary McNamara) or widely published stock photos of military aircraft and vessels.