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From the moment that Pueblo tied up at the dock in Wonsan, Bucher and his men entered into an atmosphere of Orwellian terror. North Korean officers came aboard to interrogate Bucher. Over and over, they charged that "the Americans are trying to start another war with North Korea." During the interrogation, Bucher was pistol-whipped around the head, neck and jaw.
Later, Bucher was blindfolded and led off the ship through a mob of spitting, howling spectators. The prisoners were put on a train for an all-night ride to a jail in Pyongyang, the capital.
Super-C. When Pueblo's crew arrived at the prison, the skipper was led to his quarters, an unheated cubicle with a small table, straight-backed chair and a bed. Because of his wounds, he could not lie down. It was zero outside and below freezing inside the hovel. The chief interrogator was an army officer whom the men came to call "Super-C" for super colonel. Large (about 5 ft. 10 in.) for a Korean, Super-C wore a grey, Soviet-style topcoat with red lapels and huge shoulderboards. Bucher thought he looked funny, but he soon discovered that Super-C was intelligent and cruel. The colonel alluded to Shakespeare and classical mythology, but he did not speak English. His interpreter was a man Bucher nicknamed "Wheezy," because he had a habit of coughing between practically every word to disguise his inability to translate rapidly. To Bucher's dismay, his interrogators produced bundles of secret documents that they had found on Pueblo but appeared not to understand. It was evident to Pueblo officers that Super-C —who was later promoted to general—did not want to diminish his glory by consulting North Korean naval or intelligence officers who might have helped decipher the secret documents.
At first the North Koreans demanded confessions that the men were spying for the CIA. Later the captors changed their tactics. In an effort to offset adverse world opinion and justify their piracy, they tried to force Bucher and the other crew members into confessing that Pueblo had not only been spying but war also violating North Korean territorial waters when she was seized.
Almost incessantly, during the first days of his captivity, Bucher was savagely beaten. Most brutal of all were the Korean enlisted men, who came regularly to beat the crew. A guard, said Bucher, would come into the enlisted men's quarters with a note in his hand, which told him "whom to beat up, how hard, how long, and how the man should look afterward." Routinely, the men were beaten about the face with straps, shoes or wooden slats. A bizarre note, according to Bucher, was that he could often hear the Korean officers "beating their own men for overstepping their bounds in beating our men."
Vile Stench. At times, Bucher was so badly beaten that he urinated blood. He did not tell his captors about his wounds for fear that he would be hospitalized and thus separated from his men. During the first few days of captivity, his three wounded men were confined in a room where the stench was so vile that a visitor could not help vomiting. Radioman Charles H. Crandall had 50 pieces of shrapnel in one leg; Marine Sergeant Robert J. Chicca had a bullet wound that penetrated his neck.