Freed Pilot Heads Home -- Bobby Hall, Pale And Tired, Exits N. Korea

SEOUL, South Korea - Army helicopter pilot Bobby Hall arrived back in the United States today, freed from 13 days of captivity in North Korea.

The C-137 military transport carrying Hall home stopped at Elmendorf Air Force Base at midday today for a refueling stop before the final leg of the trip to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla.

Hall had looked wan and dazed but maintained his military bearing as he took off on the long-awaited flight home.

Hall, captured after his helicopter went down over North Korea on Dec. 17, was freed after the U.S. government expressed regret for what it called a navigational error - not a spy mission as claimed by the North.

North Korea said it had shot down the helicopter. But in his initial debriefing, Hall said that all he knew was "something happened to the helicopter" and that he had landed it without crashing, according to a senior Pentagon official.

The incident threatened the fragile relations with the hard-line communist state that had improved over the past two months.

Hall walked to freedom in Panmunjom, the border village in the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas. U.S. and North Korean military officers were present for the brief, solemn ceremony on a cold and overcast morning.

Hall's co-pilot, Chief Warrant Officer David Hilemon, was killed when the helicopter went down. His body was returned last week and was buried Wednesday in Gig Harbor.

Hall, 28, was flown by helicopter to a U.S. military base in Seoul for a medical checkup.

He then delivered a brief statement at Osan Air Force Base outside Seoul. "First and foremost, I would like to express my deepmost sympathy for Mrs. Hilemon," he said. Hall also thanked State Department official Thomas Hubbard, who had worked out the final details of his release in Pyongyang.

Then Hall boarded the U.S. military plane that left for Florida, his home state.

Hall's family in Brooksville, Fla., about 40 miles north of Tampa, cheered when they got word he had been freed. Tears streamed down the face of his wife, Donna, and mother, Diane. President Clinton had called them a few hours earlier.

The oak trees along the narrow brick streets of Brooksville, the columns on the county courthouse and the town's water tower have been festooned with yellow ribbons for the last 12 days as the community showed support for Hall's family.

The State Department said North Korea agreed to return Hall after the United States signed a document expressing "sincere regret" for the incident in which Hall's helicopter strayed into North Korean airspace.

The agreement ended a dispute that jeopardized congressional approval of the U.S.-North Korea agreement to terminate North Korea's nuclear-weapons program in exchange for U.S. aid. Some Republicans, led by incoming Senate majority leader Bob Dole of Kansas, said the North Koreans' earlier refusal to release Hall and their allegations that he was engaged in espionage show they cannot be trusted.

The United States has said Hall's and Hilemon's helicopter crossed into North Korean territory because of a navigational error during a routine training mission.

State Department spokesman Michael McCurry said Hubbard and North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Song Ho Kyong reached a "written understanding" in which the United States "expresses sincere regret for this incident and agrees to contacts in an appropriate forum designed to prevent such incidents in the future."

That formulation avoids the word "apology."

U.S. officials spent much of yesterday analyzing the text of the purported confession that North Korea said Hall made.

In the statement, Hall acknowledged "our intrusion deep into the territorial airspace of North Korea." But the key paragraph says the crew's mission was to fly this route: "Chunchon-northeast dam-CP Choke-Abeam 84-west-Abeam32 back to Chunchon." All those landmarks and checkpoints are inside South Korea, Pentagon sources and analysts said, and therefore the mission was specifically not to enter North Korea.

Compiled from The Associated Press, Washington Post and Reuters.