Before reading this article, I sincerely invite you to click the "Follow" button, so that you can continue to push such articles in the future, and it is also convenient for you to discuss and share, your support is the driving force for us to insist on creating~
Text: According to the snow under the jade pass
Edit| According to the snow under the jade pass
Recently, the situation on the Korean Peninsula has become more and more tense, and there is quite a feeling that the mountains and rains are about to come and the wind is full of buildings, as if the second Korean War is just around the corner.
South Korea dares to cooperate with the United States in provoking the DPRK, relying only on the US military stationed in South Korea. However, history has proved that when North Korea becomes serious, it is often the United States that is the first to instigate.
For example, 56 years ago, in 1968, North Korea directly seized a U.S. spy ship and 82 U.S. GIs by force. The situation is even more tense than it is now when the United States directly dispatched fighter planes and aircraft carriers to exert pressure, but the final result is a big surprise: "The United States apologized to North Korea......
Father and Son
How to properly describe the relationship between the United States and South Korea? The theory of the "alliance dilemma" put forward by Glenn Snyder, an American neorealist alliance theorist, can be said to be very appropriate.
In international alliances, the allies will always worry about being betrayed and abandoned by their allies, and they will also worry about being implicated by their allies in a conflict that is contrary to their own interests.
If you want to avoid being "abandoned", you must win the trust of your allies with practical actions, which just increases the risk of being "implicated"; if you want to avoid being "implicated", you must keep a distance from your allies and not get too involved in conflicts in enemy countries, which also increases the worry of "being abandoned" by your allies.
For the U.S.-South Korea alliance, South Korea is the one who fears "being abandoned," while the United States is the one who is worried about being "implicated."
The alliance between the United States and South Korea was to prevent the communist movement from further influencing Japan and squeezing out the influence of the United States. Garrisoning troops in South Korea can also ensure that South Korea will not "go alone" to provoke North Korea and tear the United States into the water.
This is not a casual brain supplement without evidence. On August 9, 1953, as soon as the United States and South Korea initialed the "Mutual Security and Defense Treaty," Syngman Rhee clamed for "going north," which frightened the Americans. In the following year, Syngman Rhee repeatedly clamored for "going north". As a direct result, when the United States and South Korea exchanged instruments of ratification of the "Mutual Security and Defense Treaty" in 1954, the United States specifically added an article to the secret memorandum of understanding signed by the two sides:
"South Korea has pledged to cooperate with the United States on the reunification of the Korean Peninsula and to continue to give jurisdiction to the United Nations Command while it is responsible for defending South Korea unless both sides agree." ”
That is, the South Korean military is not under the command of the South Korean government unless the United States agrees.
Knowing the "father and son" relationship between the United States and South Korea, it is easy to understand what happened next.
"Pueblo" crisis
Beginning in the fall of 1966, the risk of armed conflict in the Korean demilitarized zone had increased significantly, and the Americans were highly nervous about it, believing that North Korea was going south again, and felt the need to intensify reconnaissance of North Korea's military activities and assess North Korea's "ability and intention to wage subversive and conventional warfare."
Coincidentally, at that time, the United States had just converted the "Pueblo," a small transport ship used by the Army during World War II, and equipped it with advanced electronic reconnaissance technology and equipment, making it the most advanced electronic reconnaissance ship of the US Navy.
In the second half of 1967, the commander of the U.S. Navy in Japan proposed that Korea be the primary target of the Pueblo's maiden voyage. Not only can they monitor the situation of the North Korean Navy, but they can also monitor the movements of the Soviet Navy in the Tsushima Strait to see how the Soviet Union will react.
Of course, there is a downside to this.
North Korea's declared territorial sea line is 12 nautical miles, and according to the plan, the "Pueblo" will have to move 13 nautical miles from North Korean land. If it had passed, would it have angered North Korea?
The Americans discussed for a long time, believing that North Korea should abide by the law on the high seas, and the danger level of this operation is "minimum risk".
As a result, on January 11, 1968, the "Pueblo" officially left the Japanese port of Sasebo and arrived at the North Korean port of Cheongjin for reconnaissance after a five-day voyage.
During the day, they wander 20 nautical miles from the coastline, and at night they get as close as 13 or 14 nautical miles, stealing a lot of information.
Because the North Korean side has not moved, the crew of the "Pueblo" also breathed a sigh of relief, feeling that the North Korea really did not dare to do anything with them.
During this time, an interesting episode occurred.
Late at night on January 21, 31 armed men broke into the South Korean presidential palace in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Park Chung-hee. Park Chung-hee was furious and approached the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, William Porter, saying that he would take armed revenge against North Korea.
There was no way, he had no military power, so he could only consult the Americans.
However, the United States just wants to maintain the status quo, and anyway, it is the face of the South Koreans that it has to do with the United States, so it reprimanded Park Chung-hee with righteous words: "We, the United States, do not want to have a conflict with North Korea!"
Although Park Chung-hee in the Korean movie dared to say "let the American ambassador kneel in front of the Taiji flag", in reality, he couldn't afford to offend the American ambassador at all, so he could only grit his teeth and endure it.
However, the news came quickly, and less than 48 hours later, North Korea also slapped the United States hard.
According to past practice, whenever there is friction between North Korea and the United States and South Korea, there will definitely be new actions after that. The U.S. Navy in Japan feared that North Korea would target the Pueblo and suggested that the operation be terminated. But the Pentagon lords felt that there had been no accident for so many days, and there would definitely be no accident in the future, so they vetoed this proposal.
January 23 was the last day of the Pueblo's reconnaissance mission, which was aimed at the port of Wonsan in North Korea. Because they were about to go back, the crew was much bolder, and even in the daytime, they were still wandering 13 nautical miles away from Wonsan Port.
So, the unexpected happened.
At lunchtime, a North Korean hunting submarine approached the Pueblo and asked them for their nationality. Captain Buhe of the "Pueblo" was so mad that he felt that he needed to ignore the North Koreans on the high seas, so he chose to ignore it.
Not long after, three more North Korean torpedo boats came over and demanded that the "Pueblo" stop immediately, otherwise it would open fire. Bucher still didn't take it seriously, and asked the following people to reply: "We are in the international waters, and we want to stay here until tomorrow." ”
However, the DPRK did not care whether its high seas were open or not, and sent two Soviet-made DPRK MiG fighters, as well as a submarine hunter and a torpedo boat.
Realizing that something was wrong, Buch quickly ordered to speed up the run, and the crew began to destroy the ship's equipment.
During this period, the DPRK did open fire, killing one person and injuring four others on board. The "Pueblo" was also surrounded by North Korean warships and had to choose to surrender.
The Pueblo was pulled back to Wonsan Port, and a total of 83 Americans, including the dead crew, became North Korean prisoners.
An angry America, a disgraced America
If Park Chung-hee was almost assassinated, the Americans could still pretend to be kind and call for "peace", but now that the "Pueblo" has been detained, it has really "broken the defense".
From the big-bellied veterans on Capitol Hill to the ordinary people below, they are all excited to ask the government to "take strong action". The South Korean army also drew up a "ship recapture plan". Note. It's just "recapture the ship", as for the 82 crew members plus 1 corpse, it should be regarded as sacrificing their lives for the country.
As soon as the plan was proposed, it was rejected by the White House.
First of all, 82 is not a small number. North Korea has already said: "If the US imperialists continue to try to solve this problem by means of the threat of force and intimidation, then they will never get anything out of it." If anything, it can only be corpses and death. ”
If it was really just to recapture one ship and let 82 people die, then President Johnson would have to be impeached.
Second, the U.S. government has a bigger headache than North Korea, which launched its spring offensive less than 10 days after the Pueblo crisis. So much so that the Americans once suspected that North Korea was doing this to attract firepower to Vietnam.
The United States is not capable of winning two wars at the same time. Especially when behind the DPRK stood China and the USSR. Although relations between China and North Korea were somewhat stiff at the time, Xinhua News Agency still published a comment in support of North Korea: "The people of Chinese and the people of the world are closely watching the development of the situation...... No provocation or threat of war by US imperialism will intimidate the Korean people. ”
Regardless of the American people's clamoring to teach North Korea a "lesson," according to a poll conducted at the time, although 95 percent of Americans supported the government's actions against North Korea, only 22 percent actually supported a war with North Korea, and 11 percent hoped that the United States would seize a Soviet spy ship as "retaliation."
In other words, all of them are "kings with strong mouths".
In order to get the DPRK to hand over both the ship and the people, the US government has come up with several methods.
First of all, it was natural to protest to the Soviet Union, because the United States felt that the Soviet Union had instructed the DPRK to do this.
But this really wronged the Soviet Union, and the Soviet government at that time wanted to ease relations with the United States, and did not want to see North Korea make trouble for itself. Brezhnev also once said: "North Korea's capture of the Pueblo seems to be too aggressive, and the correct thing to do is to advise or force foreign warships that have entered its territorial waters to leave." ”
At the same time, when Kim Il Sung wrote a letter asking the USSR to provide assistance to the DPRK after the start of the war, the USSR simply stated: "The Soviet-Korean alliance treaty is defensive in nature, and the current issue of Soviet assistance to the DPRK must be carefully negotiated." ”
The DPRK did not listen to the advice of the USSR at all.
Under these circumstances, the United States decided to put pressure on the DPRK and issued an ultimatum to the DPRK, demanding that they return the ship and release the crew by 25 February, and at the same time transfer a large number of military aircraft stationed in Japan to the ROK, and the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier battle group was also sent to the waters off the coast of the DPRK.
Then, the United States realized that it had miscalculated: "The DPRK is really preparing to fight with us!"
According to intelligence, the DPRK has begun to actively prepare for war, digging a large number of tunnels and underground facilities, and the DPRK's surface-to-air missile base has also been fully operational and is on high alert.
Kim Il Sung even gave instructions: "We must not relax in the slightest, we must maintain tension and thoroughly prepare everything to deal with war at any time." ”
For North Korea, now that the United States is tripped up in Vietnam and the situation in South Korea is very chaotic, it is the best opportunity to go south.
On the South Korean side, Park Chung-hee, who was stunned by the double standard behavior of the United States, is also trying to arch the fire, hoping to make the United States and North Korea fight.
The United States does not want to be implicated, and while suppressing the useless "anger" of South Korea, it has tried to ease the situation as much as possible, and even let the USS Enterprise go south to ease the situation.
Now the only solution is to negotiate with North Korea. The demands of the North Koreans are simple: "Apologize and promise that there will be absolutely no next time." ”
After learning of North Korea's conditions, South Korean public opinion was even angrier than that of the United States, so much so that Johnson specifically assured Park Chung-hee: "The United States will not humiliate itself or the South Korean government in order to let the adversary release the crew and ships, and will never make concessions lightly." ”
Sure enough, the Americans insisted very strongly for ten months, and then chose - "conditional apology".
On December 23, the U.S. government acknowledged that its electronic reconnaissance ship had intruded into North Korea's territorial waters (not to engage in illegal activities because the crew had destroyed the evidence) and issued a written apology for the incident, assuring that such incidents would not happen again.
The DPRK Foreign Ministry issued a statement on the same day: "In view of the fact that the crew of the US 'Pueblo' frankly admitted that they had violated the territorial waters of the DPRK and repeatedly asked for forgiveness, and the US government also apologized to the DPRK on the same day." After confiscating the Pueblo and the equipment and weapons on board, the North Korean government deported 82 arrested crew members along with their bodies. ”
The "Pueblo" has become a patriotic education base for the DPRK, which has never been returned to the United States, and is still a major "disgrace" for the United States......