News-Info-Alerts

Re: DMZ Excavation Planned

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: December 08, 2003

"S. Korean DMZ Excavation Plan Likely to Recover U.S. Remains

Seoul, Dec. 8 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's plan to excavate Korean War-era remains could uncover nearly 90 American servicemen who are believed to have perished on the border with North Korea more than 50 years ago, a news report said.

On Thursday, the South Korean military said it will begin next year a three-phase excavation project to recover the remains of its soldiers who were killed during the 1950-53 conflict, including areas in the Demilitarized Zone that bisects the peninsula.

"It is very possible the excavation team could come across remains of American soldiers," the U.S. military newspaper Stars & Stripes quoted a South Korean military official as saying.

The daily, citing U.S. defense data, said the remains of 89 American soldiers are still believed to be in the 2.5-mile-wide buffer zone.

In the paper's report, Lt. Col. Song Bong-jun, an official with the remains recovery office at the South Korean defense ministry, said the ministry does not hold any data regarding Americans who may have died in what is now the DMZ.

Song said that if casualty data was shared, South Korea might help with locating missing American soldiers.

About 8,100 service members remain missing from the Korean War, according to the U.S. data.

American and North Korean teams have conducted 27 recovery operations on North Korean soil since 1996, and found remains believed to be those of 180 soldiers.

The three-year war left nearly 149,000 South Korean soldiers dead and 717,000 others missing in action or taken as prisoners of war, according to a South Korean report. The data put the death toll of American soldiers at 33,000 and the number of wounded at 100,000.

The two Koreas are still technically in a state of war, as the Korean War ended with an armistice agreement and not a peace treaty.

Yonhap English News