Arriving in Wonsan in the aftermath of the initial capture, the Pueblo crew were divided into two groups and, still blindfolded, loaded into vehicles. They were taken to a train station, where a large crowd of people who had gathered yelled anti-American slogans, spit on and hit the crew members. After almost 10 hours on the train, the crew reached Pyongyang and "the Barn."
From the moment their ship was boarded onwards, one of the most disturbing things for the crew was the North Koreans "total and complete hatred" for the US crewmen.
"You could just feel it," Russell recalled in an interview with CNN. It bewildered the young Americans, many of whom "had no thoughts about North Koreans one way or another."
It wasn't until much later he …show more content…
It is still an officially commissioned US Navy ship, one of the oldest in the US fleet. Since 2013, it has been used as a tourist attraction and propaganda museum in Pyongyang.

The USS Pueblo crew greet relatives upon returning from captivity in North Korea.
War
Multiple top secret US cables and reports testify to how close the Pueblo crisis brought the Korean Peninsula to a second war.
In the 13 months prior to the Pueblo incident, there were 610 violations of the armistice agreement by North Korean troops, 200 of whom were killed while the wrong side of the DMZ. At the same time, North Korea repeatedly complained of "infiltrating naval craft and armed espionage vessels" along its coast, threatening retaliation.
"Any idiot could tell things were escalating," Russell told CNN recently. Things only got worse following the Blue House incident, of which the crew of the Pueblo were never informed.
"They should have told us to get the hell out of there, and they didn't," Russell said.
A scathing report by the Congressional Committee on Armed Services largely agreed, criticizing the planning of the mission, the lack of support or protection for the Pueblo, and the "absent or sluggish response by military commanders" once the crisis got