By Rob Lofthouse
Streamed live on December 22, 2025, Todd DePastino, Executive Director of the Veteran’s Breakfast Club (VBC), hosted one of MWSA’s authors, Steven Woelk, in an engaging interview telling the story of one of the USS Pueblo survivors. The essence of that conversation follows below.
One week before the Tet Offensive of 1968, a small, unarmed Navy intelligence ship called the USS Pueblo was attacked and captured by North Korea. The seizure of the Pueblo became its own crisis running parallel to Tet, trapping 83 American sailors in a struggle for survival that lasted nearly a year.
One of those sailors was 19-year-old Steven Woelk from Kansas. On this VBC livestream, Steven shared his remarkable firsthand story, also recounted in full in his memoir, Pig Fat Soup: Surviving My Pueblo Prisoner of War Journey.
Follow the link to the interview: https://veteransbreakfastclub.org/uss-pueblo-veteran-and-north-korean-pow-steven-woelk/
Pig Fat Soup is one of the books in this year’s MWSA Book Awards contest.