The Press TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1968. The Pueblo Affair

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31596, 6 February 1968, Page 12

The Press TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1968. The Pueblo Affair

Reported agreement, “in principle”, between the United States and North Korea on the release of the crew of the Pueblo suggests that the Incident has now served the purpose, or purposes, for which the capture of the vessel was designed by the North Koreans. As the United States also appears to be less determined to maintain that the vessel did not enter North Korean waters, the way may be open for final negotiations towards extracting at least the crew from North Korean hands. Until the reported agreement has been confirmed the possibility of a long wrangle in the United Nations remains. Nevertheless, even the most bitter diplomatic debate would be better than the retaliation that some politicians have been urging on President Johnson.

The motives behind the seizure remain obscure, but observers tend to link it with Vietnam. They see it, and the intensification of North Korean raiding across the 38th parallel, as part of North Korean strategy to tie down both American and South Korean forces in the south and prevent their transfer to Vietnam. This theory is the more persuasive in the light of the current bid by the Viet Cong to intensify the war in Vietnam —even to the penetration

of Saigon itself. The South Korean strength in Korea is estimated at 480,000 troops, with a small air force and navy. The Americans have some 60,000 men there—and the Communists seem bent on keeping them there. In Vietnam, the South Koreans have two divisions and a marine brigade, highly thought of as combat troops. North Korean pilots are flying Russian aircraft for the Viet Cong. The Pueblo affair, whatever its outcome, may be seen as fitting into a pattern of North Korean provocations, designed to keep the Americans fully extended on two fronts. The recurring raids into South Korean territory, including the recent attempt to kill the President, General Park, may be designed to create conditions which would make a South Korean withdrawal from Vietnam desirable.

A less immediate purpose may be read into the incident; and the temporary presence of the crew in North Korea is essential to this part of the affair. The North Koreans are still determined eventually to reunify Korea. Infiltrators they have sent into South Korea have not won support from the local population and, in a direct conflict, the military odds are heavily against the North Koreans. Instead, they may well envisage a “war of liberation” on the pattern set in Vietnam. The American forces in the South must be portrayed not as supporters of the South Korean Government but as aggressors against all Koreans. Those Koreans who resist the “liberating” forces must be identified as puppets of the United States. By capturing the Pueblo and holding its crew the North Korean Government has tried to present to its people visible proof of the American threat