U.S. to return 19th-century flag to S. Korea

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U.S. to return 19th-century flag to S. Korea




By Chris Amos - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Oct 11, 2007 6:20:03 EDT

A Korean battle flag captured by a contingent of sailors and Marines more than a century ago will be returned to the Korean peninsula amid calls that North Korean officials return the favor by relinquishing a Navy ship captured during the Cold War.
The Navy recently negotiated a two-year lease with South Korea’s Cultural Heritage Administration that will allow the more than 13-by-13-foot flag of Gen. Uh Je-yeon to be returned home without violating an 1814 federal law requiring the Navy to hold onto captured battle flags and an 1849 executive order requiring that those flags be kept at the Naval Academy.
The lease will not be finalized until South Korean government representatives visit the Naval Academy next week to inspect the flag, according to a written statement released by Naval Academy spokeswoman Deborah Goode.
Navy officials were unable to say Wednesday what the South Korean government would pay for the right to lease the flag, but military historian Doug Sterner said the lease was renewable and doubted that the flag would ever return to the Naval Academy.
“The bureaucrats found a technical way to do the right thing. [The flag] belongs to the Korean people. It is part of their heritage,” Sterner said. He described the flag as the Korean equivalent of the American flag that flew over Fort McHenry, Md., and inspired Francis Scott Key to write “The Star Spangled Banner” during a British bombardment.
After Colorado Sen. Wayne Allard, a Republican, called for the flag to be returned, a South Korean government delegation traveled to the United States to meet with several congressional staff members and to view the flag at the Naval Academy museum. Boosters hope that, in exchange for it, the Navy will get back its only commissioned ship in foreign hands.
“The return of the USS Pueblo is long overdue,” Allard said in April. “North Korea has hinted at the possible return of the captured U.S. Navy ship, and it is my hope that they can take action at this opportune time. In speaking with some of my constituents, I believe there may be merit to the exchange of Gen. Uh Je-yeon’s flag for the USS Pueblo.”
Pueblo captured in 1968

But there is a catch. North Korea holds the Pueblo, and the United States has no diplomatic relations with its government. The Pueblo, a surveillance ship, was captured in 1968 by the North Korean navy, which said it strayed within North Korean territorial waters while conducting intelligence operations — an assertion Navy officials denied.
One U.S. sailor was killed when North Korean naval forces fired on the Pueblo before boarding it, binding its crew and towing the ship into port.
In response, President Johnson ordered the carriers Enterprise and Kitty Hawk and their strike groups to waters off the North Korean coast and mobilized thousands of reservists, but ultimately the U.S. did not intervene militarily.
Several months later, North Korean officials released the Pueblo’s crew, including the body of the dead sailor, but refused to return the ship. It now serves as an exhibit of “American aggression” on a pier in Pyongyang, North Korea, above the wreckage of another Navy ship, the General Sherman, which was sacked, burned and sunk by a Korean mob during an American military intervention in 1871.
During that same intervention, a group of Marines and sailors captured Gen. Uh Je-yeon’s flag after a group of 300 Korean soldiers fought to the death to prevent the Marines from advancing on Seoul from a nearby island.
In April, Allard sent a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asking her to encourage President Bush to consider returning the flag, which was kept with more than 300 other captured battle flags at the Naval Academy’s museum.
Sterner said he hoped American politicians show the same determination to get the Pueblo back that South Korean officials showed in their efforts to return a flag that was captured 136 years ago.
“There has been a general apathy to the issue from people at the State Department and in Congress,” he said. “This poses an open door. The outcome will depend on how those in the position to talk about it approach the open door.”



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