25 N. Koreans Killed in 1950 Reburied in South

Twenty-five North Korean soldiers who were killed fighting U.S. forces nearly 37 years ago were buried Tuesday on a rocky hillside after their government refused to accept the bodies.

“Though they may be remains of the enemy, we pray that their souls may rest in peace and that their families may be comforted,” U.S. Army Col. Donald Boose said at a brief ceremony.

The bodies were found by a U.S. historian who was searching for missing U.S. troops, but Communist North Korea refused to accept them when approached by U.N. officials at a meeting on the border last month.

Invasion Route

A multinational honor guard lowered nine wooden caskets bearing the soldiers’ remains into graves on a steep hill above the now-prosperous valley here that was along the line of the main North Korean invasion route in 1950.

A Buddhist monk tapped a gourd and chanted for the souls of the dead.

“We told the North Koreans we’d bury them, but we didn’t tell them the date,” said Billy O. Fullerton, a U.N. Command spokesman. “They weren’t invited.”

Boose, secretary of the U.N. Command’s Military Armistice Commission, said he was disappointed by the North Koreans’ refusal to take the bodies.

“We still have missing up there, but they haven’t returned any bodies of wartime casualties since 1954,” he said.

More than 8,000 U.S. troops were listed as missing during the Korean War, and the United States has been trying to induce North Korea to help with recovery efforts. Hundreds of troops from other nations that fought in the U.N. forces that came to the South’s aid are also missing.

The North Koreans say the armistice commission is not the right venue for the issue, although it was established in part for that reason, Boose said. He noted that the North Koreans and the Chinese, who fought together in the war, have in the past accepted the bodies of their soldiers.

The North Koreans died in August, 1950, while fighting U.S. troops who were trying to maintain a foothold in southern South Korea at the Naktong River after the north’s successful offensive.

They were first buried by local villagers along with battlefield debris. A villager who took part in the burial led the U.N. Command’s staff historian, Thomas Ryan, to the site last year.

U.S. experts identified the bodies as members of the North Korean army’s Fourth Division, which had fought in China with Mao Tse-tung’s army during the Chinese Civil War.

Although North Korean officials were shown photographs and documentation, they said they were not convinced the bodies were theirs, Fullerton said.