"This is it, they're taking us out here to kill us," Stu Russell thought as he trudged through the snow in the middle of the night into a dark forest.
Russell was one of 83 Americans held captive inside North Korea, following the seizure of the USS Pueblo spy ship in international waters, on January 23, 1968.
For weeks they were kept in a sparse, freezing-cold building they nicknamed "the Barn." It had no running water and was infested with rats and bed bugs. Inside, the men were denied sleep, forced into stress positions, whipped and beaten. Their officers, particularly Lloyd Bucher, the ship's commander, came in for vicious punishments, as their interrogators demanded they sign "confessions" stating they were illegally spying in North Korean territorial waters when they were captured.
