North Korea has long been an outlaw nation

With the execution of an uncle of Kim Jong Un, we saw another example of the brutality of the North Korean regime.  Perhaps more than any other nation, North Korea is disconnected from the norms of civilization.

This has been the case for some time, and it’s why most efforts to bridge the divide have failed.  This was the case all the way back in 1968 when the USS Pueblo, a rag tag American spy ship set out to find radar stations along the coast of North Korea.  

On a January morning the Pueblo was attacked and its crew shot at and captured. The incident remains one of the seminal dramas of American foreign policy in the 60’s, of the cold war, and once again of the efforts of an American President to avert war on the Korean peninsula. Long time Los Angeles Times political reporter Jack Cheevers takes us back to this Act of War.

My conversation with Jack Cheevers: