War Remains Recovery To Begin Next Week

Korea Times - South Korea

03-06-2009 18:56

By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter

The Ministry of National Defense's agency for war remains' recovery and identification will start operations for this year March 9, the agency said Friday.

Eight teams of the Agency for Killed in Action Recovery and Identification (MAKRI) will lead the excavation work in 38 regions across the nation, it said in a news release. Twenty-one teams from Army units will support the agency's operations, it added.

Since 2000, the remains of 2,855 soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War have been recovered, it said. Of them, 2,230 were those of South Korean forces killed in the war and 74 have been identified, according to the release.

Earlier this year, MAKRI opened its new headquarters at a national cemetery in Seoul with state-of-the-art facilities and equipment for identifying war remains, such as a digital X-ray imager, 3D scanner and DNA sampling instruments.

Remains of about 130,000 South Korean solders are believed to be buried on the Korean Peninsula, while 8,100 U.S. military personnel are still missing from the war. The Korean War, often called the ``Forgotten War,'' resulted in a devastating death toll. According to the ministry, some 137,000 South Korean troops lost their lives, with a further 20,000 listed as missing in action.

Foreign records show that at least 400,000 South Korean troops and two million civilians were killed, alongside up to 1.5 million troops from communist North Korea and China.

gallantjung@koreatimes.co.kr