North Korea tells U.S. to remember the Pueblo
Reuters ^ | 01/23/08 | Jon Herskovitz

North Korea tells U.S. to remember the Pueblo

2 hours, 20 minutes ago

North Korea marked the anniversary on Wednesday of one of its rare Cold War victories over the United States by saying a U.S. spy ship it seized 40 years ago served as a lesson to show it can repel an invasion.

It is the paranoid state's latest dig at its long-time foe and which it still labels as an arch enemy despite Washington's pledge to provide aid and better diplomatic standing to Pyongyang in a disarmament deal.

"(The Pueblo) is historical evidence proving before the whole world the victory of the DPRK (North Korea) in the confrontation with the U.S. to protect the national sovereignty and dignity," the North's state media quoted an official as saying on the anniversary of the January 23, 1968 capture of the USS Pueblo.

The cash-strapped North, whose million-man army needs to ration its little fuel just to keep its jeeps, planes and tanks running, turned the Pueblo into a tourist attraction in Pyongyang several years ago to attract foreign currency.

"If the U.S. imperialists persistently pursue their hostile policy towards the DPRK and their design to invade it, they will suffer a more shameful defeat," it quoted a chief of an anti-imperialist group as saying.

North Korean vessels, including speedy submarine chasers, opened fire on the Pueblo and eventually captured it. The United States said its ship was in international waters at the time.

The Pueblo's surviving 82 crew members were held for months in a standoff that added further damage to a Lyndon Johnson administration that was already growing increasingly unpopular at the height of the Vietnam War.

U.S. negotiators apologized to North Korea to win the crews' release from brutal prison camps and the North kept control of the spy ship. The United States later retracted the apology.

North Korea, which tested a nuclear device in October 2006, has said it built atomic weapons to deter an invasion.

Even though the North is one of the world's most militarized states, its conventional forces are no match for a far superior U.S. military, analysts said.

U.S. officials have repeatedly said they have no plans to attack the country and entered into international talks to rid the North of its nuclear weaponry and fissile material.

Under a deal the North reached with regional powers including the United States, it can receive aid and removal from a U.S. terrorism blacklist if it starts to take apart its nuclear arms plant and give a full accounting of its atomic arms program.

North Korea, which has started to roll back its Yongbyon nuclear plant, appears to have met the legal criteria to be taken off the terrorism list but the removal depends on it making headway on the nuclear deal, a U.S. official said on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)