46 Years After War, North Korea Returns Recently Found Remains

Remains believed to be those of four American servicemen killed in the Korean War were flown to an Army laboratory in Hawaii on Monday after being released to U.S. officials in North Korea.

The remains will be studied at the Central Identification Laboratory at Hickam Air Force Base in hope of confirming their identities, possibly through the use of DNA, the Pentagon said.

In a brief repatriation ceremony at the airport in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, the four sets of remains were handed over to a U.S. delegation led by Robert L. Jones, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for POW-MIA affairs. They were flown to Yokota Air Base, Japan, and then to Hawaii.

The remains were recovered during a joint U.S.-North Korean excavation earlier this year. The Pentagon believes the four soldiers were killed in late November or early December 1950 in battles at the Chongchon River in North Korea, where the American 8th Army suffered the brunt of China’s initial entry into the war and lost hundreds of men.

About 8,200 U.S. servicemen are still listed as missing from the 1950-53 Korean War. In the last three years, the United States has recovered remains believed to be those of 39 Americans. Of those, three have been positively identified and returned to their families for U.S. burial.