Mock executions like this were routine, as were beatings which seemed like they would never end.

That night in the forest, as Russell shivered and slipped on the icy ground, he became ever more convinced the end had come.

Alarm

That the Pueblo's seizure did not result in war was the result of months of careful diplomatic negotiations between North Korea and the US, held in near secret at Panmunjom, the so-called "truce village" on the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea.

As those negotiations dragged on, the crew of the Pueblo were beaten, tortured, and forced to sign increasingly ludicrous confessions, even as they fretted they would face further punishment on return to the US. If they ever got back.

Capture

It was a lousy mission from the start.

Most had little to do as the spy ship's instruments listened in on North Korean communications from international waters, taking special care not to cross the 19-kilometer (12 mile) maritime border claimed by Pyongyang.

Things finally picked up on January 22, when two North Korean fishing ships circled the Pueblo, their decks packed with people straining for a look at the American ship, some holding binoculars and cameras.

Russell was the ship's cook, he came out from the galley to look at the North Koreans. Going to bed that night, he remembers how he remarked "that was pretty exciting today," only to have a more senior sailor smile and tell him "just wait until tomorrow."

He was back in the galley preparing dinner when the North Koreans returned, this time in force.

A heavily-armed subchaser circled the Pueblo and hoisted signal flags: "Heave to, or I will open fire."

Four smaller torpedo boats soon joined the subchaser and began circling the Pueblo as two MiG fighter jets flew by overhead. Bucher's ship was hopelessly outgunned, but he was in international waters and he knew other US ships had experienced this type of harassment and escaped unscathed.

As one of the North Korean ships approached the Pueblo with an armed boarding party on its deck, Bucher ordered the helmsman to head out to open sea at full speed.

Russell was outside the comms room when one of the officers inside, seeing him standing there, ran out and pulled him to the floor, screaming the North Koreans were about to open fire.

All four torpedo ships raked the Pueblo with machine guns as the subchaser pumped 57mm shells into the Pueblo's forward masts, knocking out its antennas and sending shrapnel spraying across the deck.

"We need help," radio operator Don Bailey told Kamiseya. "We are holding emergency destruction. We need support. SOS SOS SOS. Please send assistance."

The Pueblo's upper cabins filled with smoke as the crew frantically burned the classified documents on board and smashed equipment with hammers and axes.

Bucher had ordered the ship to follow the subchaser, but seeing there was still a "fantastic amount of paper" to destroy, he told the helmsman to stop, to buy more time. The North Korean ship quickly fired two salvos into the Pueblo's upper deck, seriously wounding two sailors.

Bucher entered the comms room and dictated a message to Kamiseya: "Have been requested to follow into Wonsan, have three wounded and one man with leg blown off, have not used any weapons."

"How about some help, these guys mean business," he continued. "Do not intend to offer any resistance."

Emergency

What planes were scrambled to help were launched from Okinawa, more than 1,400 kilometers (890 miles) away, and they lacked the fuel to make it to the Pueblo in one go. By the time they refueled in South Korea, it was too late.

As President Lyndon Johnson and his advisers struggled to get on top of things, they advised the government in Seoul "in strongest terms" not to attempt any action which could endanger the Pueblo's crew.

As a top secret cable warned, "once the US took retaliatory actions involving the use of military force against North Korea ... the chances of obtaining early release of the crew and ship would be virtually eliminated."

Hostages

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 learned of US activities during the Korean War: "We'd bombed the crap out of North Korea, killed over one third of the population. There was no family in North Korea that hadn't lost close relatives because of America."

This hatred — which previously manifested itself in random violence and cruelty — made it all the more likely to the crew that their North Korean captors would eventually execute them.

On that night in the snow, Russell had visions of Nazi mass graves, Poles, Russians and Jews shot and bundled into hastily dug holes by the SS. But after what felt like an eternity of walking, the men came upon a small building. Inside were taps and buckets of water for the men for the men to wash themselves with.

The North Koreans had no intention of killing their hostages: the seizure of the Pueblo had been a major propaganda victory for Pyongyang, and forcing the US to grovel to get its men back would make it even better. The crew was moved to another location — "the Farm" — where things got marginally better. They were told they would be kept there until the US apologized.

The crew thought this was impossible, but unbeknownst to them, after months of futile negotiations at Panmunjom, Johnson's administration was preparing to do just that.

Negotiations

Following the end of the Korean War in 1953, a four-kilometer (2.5 mile) wide, highly fortified demilitarized zone (DMZ) was set up between the two countries. In the center, sits the Panmunjom Joint Security Area, where South and North Korean soldiers stand watch meters away from each other.

Freedom

Even as negotiations were reaching a breakthrough, the men of the Pueblo came close to dooming themselves.

One night, after being shown two North Korean propaganda films in which Westerners were seen raising their middle fingers to the camera, the crew realized their captors didn't know what the insulting gesture meant, and started flipping them off at every opportunity, including in staged photos and films.

"They were subjected to cold temperatures, open doors, constant surveillance, lights on at night, sleep deprivation, and a more rigid enforcement of all rules," the lawsuit said. "They were required to sit in a chair at all times with their heads bowed unless they had specific permission to do otherwise."

Then, suddenly, everything changed again. The men were given new clothes and told they were about to be released. The US had agreed to apologize.

On the North Korean side of the border, the crew were sitting in two buses, wearing new clothes given them that morning. The temperature was frigid, and the moisture from their breath turned to ice on the windows as they waited for several hours.

Eventually, at 11:30 a.m., the men crossed the "Bridge of No Return," which spanned the DMZ. They came in single file, led by Bucher, who was followed by two crew members carrying the body of Duane Hodges, who had died as a result of a wound sustained during the attack on the Pueblo.

As he crossed into South Korea, Russell thought "this is the greatest day of my life," but his face, like those around him, was largely devoid of emotion, his spirit "beaten down so far, and trying to come back up."

It was 11 months to the day since the Pueblo was captured.

Once in South Korea, the men were led to an army base and ate "one of the finest meals" they'd ever had: coffee, orange juice, ham sandwiches, and chicken soup. They were helicoptered to a base near Seoul for medical check ups before finally, on December 24, flying back to the US and their families, just in time for Christmas.

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 underway.

"The Navy had no contingency plans whatsoever to provide for going to the rescue of the USS Pueblo in an emergency," the report said.

The history of the Korean Peninsula since the war which split it is littered with incidents like the Pueblo, though the ship's seizure was by far the worst. At times of the greatest tensions, communication has been cut off between Pyongyang and Seoul and Washington, leaving all parties to guess at what the other's intentions are.

Ultimately, what avoided war in 1968 could be what avoids it today: sitting down and talking. This month, North and South Korea did just that, reopening communication lines for the first time in more than two years.