It’s been 50 years since North Korea captured the USS Pueblo and its crew. Now, as President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un are on speaking terms, some hope it’ll mean the Cold War-era Navy intelligence ship will get to come home.

Prior to the North Korean summit Congressman Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, sent a letter to the president asking that he negotiate the return of the USS Pueblo. It didn’t happen, but talking is progress, Tipton suggested in a June op-ed.

“While I did not receive a direct response from the president, I did receive assurances from his administration that the return of this ship would be addressed in future negotiations with North Korea,” Tipton wrote. “As the door to peaceful negotiations with North Korea continues to open, we all know that denuclearization must remain the top priority.

“It is vital that Kim Jong Un is held accountable and that he follows through on his promise to eliminate his entire nuclear arsenal. The security of this nation, and the world, depends on it.”

Since the summit between the two leaders, new evidence attests that North Korea isn’t reversing its nuclear capabilities, but rather beefing them up. It’s unclear what that means for the USS Pueblo. Talk about potential negotiations have centered around denuclearization. And foreign affairs experts believe convincing North Korea to give up its program will mean some concessions from Washington.

Local, state and federal lawmakers have been calling on the return of the ship for decades. Most recently Tipton authored a resolution that does the same. Colorado GOP Congressmen Doug Lamborn, Mike Coffman and Ken Buck have signed on as co-sponsors, too.

“For the past fifty years, the USS Pueblo has sat moored in the Potong River and remains the only commissioned vessel by the US Navy to be held in captivity. In that time, it has become one of North Korea’s most popular tourist destinations,” Tipton wrote. “It is disgraceful that this American ship – where an American life was taken – has become a tool for North Korean propaganda.”

In January 1968, the Pueblo named for Colorado’s Steel City was reportedly about 16 miles off the coast of North Korea attempting to intercept North Korean radio communication when it was captured. One crew member, Petty Officer Duane Hodge, was killed in the takeover. The other 82 members were held hostage for nearly a year.

The hijacking of the ship was a crucial point in the Cold War. Declassified documents from the National Security Agency now show that North Korea gained several top secret encryption devices and documents, even as the crew members attempted to destroy them — first with sledgehammers and then tossing the equipment overboard— as North Korea boarded the ship.

Author Jack Cheevers, a former Los Angeles Times journalist who wrote a book about the Pueblo, said in 2014 that “the Pueblo affair may have produced a much greater loss than the recent disclosures of former NSA contract employee Edward Snowden.”

For nearly 11 months the crew was tortured. Commander Lloyd M. “Pete” Bucher gave up the ship without a fight, a move he was highly criticized for. But the Pueblo was hardly ready for what it’d undergo in the Korean peninsula. The ship, which is now suspected to have had a bevy of its own problems, had a top speed of just 13 knots and was only equipped with two .50-caliber machine guns for self defense, according to the U.S. Naval Institute.

Now the ship, located in Pyongyang, is a tourist destination. North Korea boasts it brings in nearly 1,000 visitors each day as an anti-American beacon of U.S. aggression.

While the ship is a symbol of high tensions between the two nations and an exercise of propaganda, Tipton said in his editorial it’s the crew members who endured the affair that he keeps advocating for the return of the ship.

“We owe it to the memory of Petty Officer Duane Hodges and the rest of the crew members to bring the USS Pueblo home, and I will continue to advocate for its return until this mission is achieved,” Tipton said.

There are no indications, above what the Trump administration has conveyed to Tipton, that the ship will be back in U.S. waters soon or that its return is part of any talks with North Korea.