In 1968, a small American spy ship set out on a dangerous mission: to pinpoint military radar stations along the coast of North Korea. Packed with advanced electronic-surveillance equipment and classified intelligence documents, the USS Pueblo was poorly armed and lacked backup by air or sea. Its crew, led by ex-submarine officer Pete Bucher, was made up mostly of untested sailors in their teens and twenties. On a frigid January morning the Pueblo was challenged by a North Korean gunboat. When Bucher tried to escape, his ship was quickly surrounded, shelled and machine-gunned, and forced to surrender. One American was killed and ten wounded, and Bucher and his young crew were taken prisoner. Less than forty-eight hours before the Pueblo's capture, North Korean commandos had nearly succeeded in assassinating South Korea's president in downtown Seoul. Together, the two explosive incidents pushed Cold War tensions toward a flashpoint as both North and South Korea girded for war, with fifty thousand American soldiers caught between them.