Don’t mess with the U.S. Navy. It’s a lesson pirates need to learn. Military.com reports:

Sailors from the Norfolk-based destroyer James E. Williams boarded a North Korean merchant ship that had been hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia, while two other Navy vessels tailed a pirated Japanese ship in the same region.

The Williams, which left Norfolk in July , was about 50 nautical miles from the ship Dai Hong Dan in the Arabian Sea when it received word of the pirate attack, said Lt. John Gay , a spokesman for the Navy’s Central Command in Manama, Bahrain.

The Williams dispatched a helicopter and ordered the pirates to give up their weapons via a bridge-to-bridge radio. The North Korean crew, which had retained control of the steering and engineering spaces, then confronted the pirates and gained back control of the bridge, according to a Navy news release.

Initial reports from the North Korean crew said two pirates were killed and five others captured, the release said.

Soon afterward, the North Korean crew permitted a small party from the Williams to come aboard, Gay said.

Three corpsman, accompanied by armed Sailors and a Williams crew member who spoke Korean, boarded the Dai Hong Dan from a rigid hull inflatable boat. The corpsman assisted wounded crew members and attackers.

Three Koreans were transported to the Williams for medical attention before being returned to their ship, Gay said. The pirates were being held on the Dai Hong Dan.

And it wasn’t the only one recaptured by the Navy:

Hundreds of miles away in the same region, two other Navy ships were tracking a Japanese-owned ship seized by pirates over the weekend, Gay said.

The spokesman said that two “coalition” ships from Combined Task Force 150 had responded to the hijacking of the Golden Mori , a Japanese-owned ship registered in Panama.

Combined Task Force 150, which conducts maritime security operations in the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Aden, includes vessels from the Pakistani, British, French, German and U.S. navies.

Navy officials with knowledge of the incident confirmed that the U.S. destroyers Porter and Arleigh Burke, both based in Norfolk, responded to the Golden Mori’s distress call.

One of the responding ships fired warning shots in front of the Golden Mori.

It also aimed disabling shots at two skiffs — the boats the pirates used to approach the ship — towed behind the Golden Mori. The skiffs caught fire and sank, Gay said.

Don Surber believes this will help relations with North Korea. I’m not so sure. While we’re negotiating peacefully with them to dismantle their nuke program, they’re sending it to a bigger enemy, Syria. It’ll be kind of difficult for Kim Jong to feel closer to us after everything he’s done to make sure NKs despise the United States.