FOREWORD 11 November 2000

The Korean War ended with an armistice, signed 27 July 1953. More than 8,100 servicemen are unaccounted-for from that war, men who were killed in action, died as POWs, or were missing in action and presumed dead. Although the Korean War is popularly known as the Forgotten War, the U.S. government has not forgotten those missing men. The search for answers on the unaccounted-for servicemen started before the 1953 ceasefire and goes on today. The all-important effort to obtain cooperation from our Korean War era adversaries has achieved remarkable results in recent years.

This report highlights those government efforts to achieve full accounting of the Korean War losses since the end of that conflict. The dedicated effort of the United Nations Command to get an accounting of the missing from the Communists can be traced back to the first Truce Tent meetings in 1951; their work paid off with the 1953 and 1954 prisoner and remains exchanges and later in the return of remains from North Korea in the 1990s. Bringing the most recent promise for the accounting of our missing men may be the current joint U.S./Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) effort to conduct searches in formerly closed areas of North Korea. Also, the continued access to Russian Air Force archives by the U.S.-Russian Joint Commission on POW/MIAs is shedding light after 50 years on the fate of many of our aviators lost over North Korea. Our remains identification facilities and supporting laboratories are working hard to push the full accounting effort forward. The report recognizes both their effort and the contributions of the staffs of the military service casualty offices, which are succeeding in locating families of the lost servicemen after nearly 50 years.


On 27 July 1995 at the National Korean War Memorial dedication, President Clinton, speaking about the MIAs, made our goals clear: “…we have not forgotten our debt to them and we will never stop working for the day when they can be brought home.” We are honored to produce this report as a means to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Korean War, and we hope the report will help inform those concerned on the totality of the U.S. government effort to find answers on those still missing from that conflict. This report is also available on the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) web site at http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo.

Contents

Introduction		7
Chapter 1:	Post-Armistice Accounting Effort	11
Chapter 2:	Opening the Door to Northeast Asia	25
Chapter 3:	The Accounting Challenge	39
Chapter 4:	Outreach	57
Chapter 5:	The Commitment	61
	Glossary of Terms	65
	References and Acknowledgments	67

Introduction

On 11 November 1999, at the Arlington National Cemetery Memorial Service, President Clinton delivered his Veterans Day address. Standing by were members of Congress, cabinet principals and undersecretaries, members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), leaders and soldiers from veteran service organizations, and foreign dignitaries representing countries that had stood with the United States in overseas conflicts. During his remarks the president mentioned the sacrifices made by the prisoners of war this past century and the need to continue our efforts to locate those missing: “I am proud to announce today that we have successfully recovered the remains of three more United States servicemen lost during the Korean War. They’re coming home tonight. But we must not waver in our common efforts to make the fullest possible accounting for all our MIAs, for all their families to have their questions answered.”

The repatriation of these three men took place at Sunan Airport in North Pyongyang, DPRK. The U.S. government official accepting the remains was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Prisoner of War (POW)/Missing Personnel Affairs, Robert L. Jones. Military honors were provided by an honor guard from the United Nations Command. The remains were evacuated through Japan to Hawaii in a U.S. Air Force Air Mobility Command C-17 cargo aircraft. The recovery was conducted by a combined U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii (CILHI) and Korean Peoples Army (KPA) search and recovery team, which had been investigating locations along the Chongchon River in North Korea where U.S. servicemen had been missing since November 1950. This remains recovery was not a first-time event—in fact, it was the 12th such operation in four years. This report recounts the extraordinary effort involved in attaining agreement between two countries still technically at war to search for missing U.S. servicemen. It also highlights other initiatives of the U.S. government effort to get answers on our missing service members from the Korean War. The nearly 50-year endeavor to get an accounting of more than 8,100 servicemen lost in that war has often met with frustration, but not for the lack of all possible effort. Beyond the early successes from the prisoner exchanges, Operations Big and Little Switch, and the remains recoveries from Operation Glory, not much progress was made.

The U.S. government was, and continues to be to a significant extent, constrained by the Cold War realities and the regional security problems of the 1950s through the early 1990s. Even so, through consistent exertion by the United Nations Command, and with the support of members of Congress, the U.S. government was able to receive from the North Koreans more than 200 sets of remains in the early 1990s.

In recent years even more remarkable successes have been achieved in obtaining cooperation from our Korean War adversaries, particularly the North Koreans and the Russians. U.S. Army CILHI and DPMO teams since 1996 have spent up to six months a year in North Korea conducting battlefield search and recovery operations and archival research missions; they have been backed by a small logistics coordination element out of Beijing for the same length of time. From this endeavor, over 90 sets of remains have been recovered.

This report also mentions the cooperation by the Russian Federation, which has passed to the Department of Defense (DoD) more than 14,000 relevant pages from archival sources. In addition, Russian officials have allowed U.S. researchers regular access to the Russian Air Force archives from the Korean War, files that are rich in descriptions of U.S. aircraft shootdown incidents.

While China has remained cautious about U.S. government engagement on POW/ MIA matters related to the Korean War, its Ministry of Foreign Affairs has taken on dozens of specific cases of U.S. Korean War losses for research. Moreover, it has begun to make available its veterans for oral history interviews and is expected soon to allow for academic exchanges. DPMO, in its own oral history and archival research programs, hasinterviewed more than 1,500 veterans and sifted through thousands of feet of file space contained in archives worldwide. From this effort, researchers have generated leads on what happened to many hundreds of the Korean War missing.

Our Republic of Korea (ROK) allies have entered into a cooperative effort with DoD to share data from their research and remains recovery effort in South Korea on their own losses. This three-year initiative has begun with the excavation of sites from the early battles between the ROK Army and the KPA near Seoul and Taegu.

Advances in science since the mid-1980s have allowed the U.S. Army CILHI to begin reexamining the remains of unknown Korean War servicemen buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, Honolulu, Hawaii. The families of the missing are full partners in the endeavor, thanks to an outreach program being conducted by DPMO and the services aimed at locating these next of kin. Already 1,686 next-of-kin samples of the rapidly expanding mitochondrial DNA database are on file at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory. This database is also being used to aid in the identification of the remains returned from the current joint U.S./DPRK search and recovery program.

Despite recent progress, challenges ahead remain daunting. DoD policymakers will continue to press the North Koreans for assistance in resolving reports of postwar live sightings of Americans in that country. It is a further goal of DoD to continue the dialogue with the DPRK to gain access to unsurveyed prison camp and UN registered cemeteries in North Korea. Investigations in Russia will continue as well, in an effort to determine if transfers of servicemen to the Soviet Union took place during the Korean War. In the archival research realm, thousands of linear feet of file space in more than 300 records repositories located worldwide are still awaiting review and indexing for leads on our MIAs. DoD researchers will continue to aggressively pursue any information from any avenue that will assist the U.S. government in these POW/MIA accounting endeavors.

Chapter 1: Post-Armistice Accounting Effort

In June 1951, UN and Communist forces were entrenched in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that now separates the Koreas; the Korean War had begun its second year and was at a stalemate. Prospects for a peaceful resolution to the conflict emerged following a statement made on 1 June by United Nations Secretary General Trygve Lie, who called for a cease-fire along the 38th Parallel. Also at that time, the U.S. Department of State made overtures to the Soviets asking them to approach the Chinese about a cease-fire. Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko responded by suggesting that a military armistice could be concluded between the military powers, ignoring larger political and territorial matters.

Encouraged by the Soviet position, the JCS, in coordination with the Department of State, instructed General Mathew Ridgway, Commander of the UN Command (UNC), to broadcast a radio message to the commander in chief of Communist forces in Korea. Ridgway’s 30 June message called for a meeting to discuss a cease-fire and a mechanism to maintain the armistice. This signal was answered a day later by the Communists, who were willing to begin cease-fire discussions in Kaesong. An 8 July meeting of UN and Communist liaison officers took place at this neutral site, and they arranged for the first negotiation session between Admiral C. Turner Joy and General Nam Il, the selected heads of delegation for the opposing sides.

Admiral Joy took his guidance from General Ridgway and General Omar Bradley, Chairman of the JCS. ,The Secretaries of Defense and State (George Marshall and Dean Acheson) and the JCS developed the White House–approved negotiating parameters for him. At the first meeting on 10 July, Admiral Joy presented a nine-point agenda to General Nam. The agenda included a call for cessation of hostilities, a truce line, the make-up of observer teams, the role of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in prison camp inspections, and the return of prisoners of war. After three more
weeks of meetings involving proposals and counterproposals on the substance of the agenda, the opposing sides came to an agreement, which included the prisoner of war handling issue.

The UN and Communist sides developed a framework for the prisoner exchanges in a series of meetings in Kaesong between December 1951 and March 1952. One of the few agreements reached in these meetings involved the 18 December 1951 exchange of prisoner lists; accordingly, the Communists passed a list of 3,198 Americans whom they claimed were in their custody at that time. Intense study of this early list by the U.S. Forces Far East Command became, in part, the basis for postwar discussions with the Communists on men who did not return.

Operations Little Switch and Big Switch

The Truce Tent discussions on the disposition of POWs were highly contentious. Throughout 1952 and much of 1953, the key issue that held up progress on the prisoner exchanges was the Communists’ refusal to allow for voluntary nonrepatriations of prisoners. The UN side postulated that the Communists would be afraid of a propaganda defeat from massive defections from the compounds holding enemy POWs. A UN poll of Communist prisoners in April 1952 indicated only about 70,000 of the 170,000 prisoners and civilian internees wished to return to Communist custody.

It was not until March 1953 that substantial headway was made on the POW exchange issue, when the Communist side unexpectedly agreed on 28 March 1953 to an ICRC and Commander, UNC–proposed exchange of sick and wounded prisoners. The exchange, Operation Little Switch, took place from 20 April to 3 May 1953. One hundred forty-nine Americans, of a total of 684 UN prisoners, were released. These men were flown immediately to hospitals in Tokyo and San Francisco for recuperation. During debriefings, repatriated prisoners from Operation Little Switch reported that not all of the sick and wounded prisoners eligible for release were exchanged by the Communists. This reporting
prompted Rear Admiral John C. Daniel, then the senior UNC liaison member, to lodge a protest at a May 1953 meeting in Panmunjom, accusing the Communists of withholding more than 300 sick and wounded men from exchange.

The breakthrough that resulted in the exchange of the balance of the prisoners was the Communist side’s ultimate concession to the UN position favoring the voluntary nonrepatriations of prisoners. Both sides had argued for months on all details concerning the handling of those prisoners desiring not to be repatriated; chief among the disputes was the nomination of the neutral countries that would handle them and the location and the length of custody at the neutral site before final disposition. Agreement was reached on the handling of the voluntary nonrepatriates in June of 1953; further, language was worked out in the Armistice Agreement that all prisoners would be released within 60 days of the signing of the armistice. Accordingly, with the 27 July 1953 signing, a total of 3,597 Americans were released along with 1,384 UN prisoners and 7,862 Republic of Korea (ROK) soldiers at the new truce village, Panmunjom, between 5 August and 5 September 1953. The sick and wounded held back from Operation Little Switch were among those released in this second phase. U.S. returnees from Operation Big Switch were trucked or taken by helicopter from Panmunjom to Inchon, and from there, nine transport ships took them to San Francisco for eventual release to units and families.

UN Requests for POW Accounting

As stated earlier, the United Nations received a list of 3,198 American prisoners and another 9,000 UN and ROK prisoners that the Communist side admitted holding on 18 December 1951. Thirty-two men were reported dead by the Communists, 23 chose to defect (two of whom reversed their decision in the POW exchange process), and two were unaccounted for. The rest came back in the prisoner exchanges. Nevertheless, the UN side believed that the Communists should have been able to account for many more missing and suspected prisoners. The Far East Command, working with the military services, developed lists of individuals for whom there was some evidence that the Communists should know of their fate.

The overall program name for the effort to obtain information on detained personnel from the Korean War was the Returned or Exchanged Captured American Personnel-Korea program or “RECAP-K.” The POW returnees played a huge role in this endeavor. They received a four-phased debriefing program consisting of (1) biographical summary of the individual, (2) counterintelligence—consisting of questions to determine the degree, if any, to which the prisoner might have succumbed to Communist indoctrination, (3) general military intelligence on enemy
facilities, equipment, and order of battle, and (4) questions on those who did not return and questions of regional interest not covered in other phases.

To administer the POW interview process, the U.S. Army organized multiservice interview teams, called Joint Intelligence Processing Teams, which were deployed on each of the ships transporting the repatriated POWs. The teams included trained interrogators and psychiatrists and members of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. The Far East Command created special forms to aid in the interview process: Army Forces Far East Form 545, used to identify prisoners the returnees believed had died, and Form 546, used to identify prisoners believed to be alive.

Apart from the POW returnee questionnaire data, the Far East Command personnel and intelligence staffs reviewed other information, including command reports, wartime letters written home by prisoners, intelligence reports, ICRC reports, propaganda broadcasts, and domestic and foreign press articles, including Communist publications such as Shanghai News and the National Guardian, for any mention of prisoners. From this review the Far East Command intelligence staff produced a report, “A Study in Repatriation,” in September 1953, which included lists of known or suspected prisoners. On 9 September 1953, shortly before the study’s completion, the UN presented the Communists a list of 3,404 (including 944 American) names of missing persons characterized at the time as POWs and asked the Communists for an accounting.

The Communists did not provide an immediate satisfactory answer concerning this list, but did make known to the Indian led body administering the POW repatriations, the Neutral Nations Repatriations Commission, that 23 of the men were refusing repatriation. Two of these 23 reversed their decisions during the prisoner exchange process. Later during Operation Glory, the Communists returned the remains of some of the men on the list. In May and August of 1955 they returned 15 aviators allegedly captured after being shot down over China airspace. The Communists also responded to a 26 November 1955 update of the list, resulting in a UN reduction of more than 1,000 names. POW repatriates themselves mentioned the death of some of these men in the prison camps.

The Department of Defense (DoD) revealed in 1957 that the list of 944 was not actually a list of unrepatriated prisoners, but in fact a list of missing men about whom the Communists should have known something. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (DASD) Stephen S. Jackson (Manpower, Personnel, and Reserve Affairs) testified before the House of Representatives Subcommittee on the Far East and Pacific and stated,

Shortly after the official exchange of POWs had been completed in September 1953, officials of the UN Command handed the Communist side a list of 3,404 names of missing UN Command personnel including the names of 944 United States servicemen of whom we had reason to believe the Communists should have some knowledge. At the outset I should like to make clear that in placing this demand for an accounting on the Communists, the UN Command did not intend to imply that we were charging the Communists with holding this large group of Americans alive and against their will.

The services continued to search for information on the fates of men on this U.S. list of 944 into the 1960s. The Air Force project name for their effort was “Project American,” from which Manual, FM 200-25 was produced in 1961, describing the circumstances of loss of each of its men on the list. By 1954 the U.S. list stood at 526, by 1957, 450, and by 1962, 389. When the list stood at 450,
the U.S. Congress expressed its desire for the accounting of these men in a joint resolution sponsored by Rep. Clement Zablocki (WI) of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The resolution stated in part, “…let it be Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That it is the sense of Congress that the President, through his own offices, and those of the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, should make the return of the four hundred and fifty American prisoners of war still imprisoned by the Communist forces the foremost objective of the foreign policy of the United States.”

Since the signing of the Armistice Agreement, the UNC has passed the list to the Communist side no fewer than 31 times with a request for an accounting. The reductions came largely through the investigative and graves registration efforts of the services and not through the aid of the North Koreans or Chinese. Some of the men on the list were actually recovered by U.S. graves registration teams operating in the UNC-controlled side of the DMZ following the war.

Policy and Direction on POW Accounting

The POW accounting issue was of interest at the highest levels of the U.S. government. As mentioned earlier, the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman, JCS provided White House– approved guidance to the UNC on negotiating with the Communists at Panmunjom. President Eisenhower in 1954 sent personal telegrams to the families of known POWs held in China, stating that the U.S. government would take the necessary steps to secure the release of these men. His Operations Coordinating Board, an interagency panel made up of representatives from the Departments of State and Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the U.S. Information Agency, met periodically in the mid-1950s to coordinate positions for U.S. diplomats dealing with the Communists. Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson formed an Advisory Committee on POWs in the summer of 1955 to develop policy recommendations on various aspects of the POW issue including code of conduct, military justice, and strategies for approaching the Communists on POW accounting.

Efforts through Geneva

While the UNC was the principal communications link to the Communists on POW/MIA issues, the U.S. government also used the ICRC in Geneva. As early as 1950, the Far East Command and the services developed lists of missing men with requests for information on their status for passing through Red Cross channels. Later requests included men on the list of 944. In addition, the Far East Command used the channel to protest to the Chinese for moving select small groups of POWs (who were ultimately repatriated) from the main camps at Pyoktong, Wiwon and Changsong, North Korea, across the Yalu River for overnight stays in Dandong, China, for interrogation. These returnees described being interrogated by Chinese and Russian personnel about aircraft characteristics, capabilities, and unit order of battle.

In 1954, also in Geneva, at the suggestion of the Chinese, Ambassador Alexis Johnson conducted a series of meetings with representatives of the Chinese Consulate. These meetings led to the May and August 1955 release of 15 aviators alleged to have been shot down over China during the war. One Canadian aviator held in China preceded these handovers in 1954. Six months prior to
the release of the first group of Americans, the American consul general had protested to the Chinese concerning their government’s military court martial conviction of these aviators on charges of spying.

Operation Glory

During the Korean War thousands of U.S servicemen men were killed or died as prisoners on the territory of North Korea. The locations of prison camp and UN registered cemeteries and isolated burials were known to the UN side of the Military Armistice Commission (MAC), the combined UN and Communist body charged with administering the Armistice Agreement. The Armistice Agreement included a provision for the recovery of these men and those of the Communist side on South Korean territory. At the 47th meeting of the MAC on 17 August 1954, the final arrangements for exchange of remains of missing servicemen on the territory of the DPRK and the ROK were made. The specific language from the Armistice Agreement, paragraph 13f, read,

In those cases where places of burial are a matter of record and graves are actually found to exist, permit graves registration personnel of the other side to enter, within a definite time limit after this Armistice Agreement becomes effective, the territory under their control, for the purpose of proceeding to such graves to recover and evacuate the bodies of the deceased military personnel of that side, including deceased prisoners of war. The specific procedures and the time limit for the performance of the above task shall be determined by the MAC. The commanders of the opposing sides shall furnish to the other side all available information pertaining to the places of burial of the deceased military personnel of the other side.

The 17 August 1954 “Understanding on Administrative Details for Delivery and Reception of Bodies of Military Personnel of Both Sides” permitted only the exchange of remains and not the provision of the cross-border operations by graves registration teams. There was concern at the UNC that the Communist side would use the provision as a cover for reconnaissance missions. Both sides had previously agreed to allow for recovery of losses in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), which took place from 12 August 1953 to 21 November 1953. For those operations both the UN and Communist sides cleared lanes through mine fields and conducted recovery operations in their own side of the DMZ, the four kilometer–wide strip of territory on either side of the 240 kilometer Military Demarcation Line. Six MAC observer teams supervised the DMZ recoveries. In those operations, U.S. graves registration teams recovered 253 sets of remains.

Operation Glory began 1 September 1954 and lasted two months. The Korea Communications Zone Graves Registration Division was responsible for the recovery of North Korean and Chinese dead and returned 14,000 sets of remains. The two available quartermaster companies processed both inbound U.S. dead and outbound Korean People’s Army/Chinese People’s Volunteers (KPA/CPV) dead; they were augmented by two ROK graves registration companies. The division accepted 4,023 UN dead including 2,944 Americans. UN remains were transported by Russian trucks under joint North Korean and Chinese guard jeeps to Panmunjom 17 and met there by UN escort jeeps carrying flags emblazoned with the words Operation Glory on a white background. At the Munsan-ni railhead, just south of Panmunjom, each U.S., UN, or ROK set of remains received was assigned an N-Evacuation Number (a unique registration and inventory number) — the first step in the identification process.

All identification media and personal effects were to be delivered with the remains. The remains were then sent by train to Pusan in southeast ROK, following a memorial ceremony in Seoul. From Pusan they went by ship to the Port of Moji in Japan. At the Central Identification Unit in Kokura, the U.S. war dead were identified prior to their return to the United States. The 421 unidentifiable service members were buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, known as “the Punchbowl,” beginning with a shipment aboard the U.S.S. Manchester out of the Port of Yokahama, 21 January 1954. The first identified Operation Glory returns left port on 16 October 1954 on the U.S.N.S.E.D. Patrick, bound for the United States.

Although Operation Glory had a specified end date of 31 October 1954, a provision for the return of any new remains discoveries was retained from the 17 August 1954 Understanding on repatriations, paragraph 20. It read, “In the event that either side discovers in its territory bodies of military personnel belonging to the other side after the termination of this understanding, the delivery and reception of such bodies shall be arranged through the Secretaries of both sides of the MAC.”

Operations in South Korea

From 1951 to 1956 U.S. Eighth Army graves registration teams conducted search and recovery operations in the southern part of the peninsula in search of U.S. dead. U.S. Army Graves Registration Services teamed with the U.S. Eighth Army Historian to develop field search cases for every combat engagement in which U.S. servicemen were still missing from the initial ground battle at Osan (Task Force Smith--1/21 Infantry and A/52nd Field Artillery, 5 July 1950, Field Search Case 001F). The teams worked with the Korean Police, local officials, and schools to publicize the search effort and systematically combed each 1,000-square-meter grid where missing U.S. servicemen were last seen. Between division and Eighth Army Mortuary operations, 25,000 U.S. dead from battlefields and temporary cemeteries in the south were sent to Kokura to be identified along with those from Operation Glory.

The Central Identification Unit (which also processed the Operation Glory remains returns) opened in January 1951 in Kokura to accept remains from UN cemeteries. With the death from a military motor vehicle mishap and evacuation of the remains of U.S. Eighth Army Commander General Walton Walker to the United States, a precedent and policy was established to evacuate all U.S. dead out of Korea.

The last shipment of remains from the Korean War left Port Moji on 1 February 1956 aboard the USS Marine Adler, and the Kokura facility was closed shortly thereafter. The effort in the south did not end in 1956, however. Over the years numerous remains discoveries have been reported by farmers, local police, and even U.S. and ROK military forces. The U.S. Eighth Army Mortuary and Historian’s offices teamed up with the U.S. Army CILHI to investigate and recover remains in response to such reports. This effort resulted in remains recoveries in 1982, 1987, 1989, 1995, and each year from 1997 to 2000. Recoveries in 1982 and 1987 led to identifications of two U.S. soldiers missing since the North Koreans push toward the Pusan Perimeter in the summer of 1950. Upon analysis at CILHI, the other recoveries were determined not to be those of missing U.S. soldiers.

While most recoveries in the aforementioned time frame resulted from individual discoveries, deliberate battlefield excavations were conducted in 1986, 1987, and 1999 in South Korea in sites from the battles of Chipyong Ni, Obong Ni, and Horseshoe Ridge,18 which had all taken place in 1951 east of Seoul in the north central area of South Korea. This effort involved systematically clearing dozens of wartime fighting positions from the battle sites. All recoveries from these battlefields were determined to be Chinese and North Korean mongoloid remains not found during Operation Glory.

Breakthroughs in the 1990s

Regrettably, little progress was made on the POW/MIA issue with the DPRK between 1954 and 1990. The defense of South Korea was a paramount security concern to the United States. Cross-DMZ attacks and acts of terrorism inside and outside of the Korean peninsula were a constant problem. Tragic reminders of these were the seizure of the U.S.S. Pueblo and crew in January 1968 with the loss of one man, the April 1969 shootdown of a U.S. Navy EC –121 in the Sea of Japan with the loss of 31 crew, and the August 1976 ax murders of two U.S. Army officers at Panmunjom. More than 70 U.S. servicemen and 300 ROK military lost their lives as a result of hostile action by the North Koreans between 1955 and 1994.

Notwithstanding the acute postwar tensions on the peninsula, the UNC continued to appeal to the Communist side for both an accounting of MIAs and the return of remains in this period. Between 1956 and 1985 on a near annual basis, the UNC surfaced as an agenda item, a request for the accounting of 2,233 UN losses, including 389 Americans. In December 1982 the UNC senior member requested that the KPA/CPV conduct a search of the burial sites at UNC POW Camp Number 5 at Pyoktong for possible remains. With the request was a map depicting the sites. The KPA ignored the request at that time as well as three others in August of 1983, 1984, and 1985.

In September 1985 a KPA representative to the MAC told an American United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission (UNCMAC) officer that the DPRK leadership would respond positively to a proposal for the return of U.S. remains. Then in October 1985, during a visit to the UN, DPRK Foreign Minister Kim Yong Nam met in New York with Frank Kerr, then president of the Chosin Few, a U.S. veterans organization made up of survivors of the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir. In the meeting Nam mentioned the DPRK would be willing to discuss repatriation of U.S. servicemen’s remains directly with the U.S. government. The U.S. government, in deference to the ROK government, responded in December 1985 that the remains returns should be handled multinationally with the MAC. The ROK government’s position on this issue was clear, as Foreign Minister Lee Han Key informed the U.S. ambassador to the ROK that the United States should not meet with the DPRK without ROK participation under any circumstances.

The timing of these overtures suggested that the DPRK may have wanted to use the POW/MIA issue as a wedge to marginalize the ROK, which they considered a puppet government of the United States. To counter this position, the UNC continued to argue for remains recovery participation by all UNC members during the winter of 1985. It began collecting data on men still missing from UN member nations in preparation for conducting remains recovery operations in North Korea of both U.S. and UN losses. In August 1986 the UNC again passed to the Communist side information on grave sites in North Korea. The North Koreans held their ground, continuing to express their desire to keep discussions at the U.S. and DPRK governmental level, and proposed the establishment of U.S./DPRK bilateral search parties to conduct recovery operations.

In October 1987, on behalf of the DPRK, the Soviet embassy in Washington relayed a letter to U.S. Representative Steven Solarz (NY) and Senator Alan Cranston (CA) that proposed a meeting be organized between U.S. and DPRK parliamentarians. While such a meeting did not take place, an arrangement was made through the Department of State and the UNC that the DPRK would return five sets of remains to a U. S. congressional delegation headed by U.S. Representative Frank McCloskey (IN). A terror incident perpetrated by the DPRK in January 1988 (the bombing of Korean Air Lines Flight 858) precluded an exchange at that time.

North Korea Returns Remains

The two sides came closer to a remains exchange in 1989, although the North continued to attach conditions, namely, the lifting of sanctions and the removal of the DPRK from the U.S. Department of State’s “State Sponsor of Terrorism” list. By November 1989, the North Korean position softened when the DPRK UN observer Ho Jong suggested remains could be returned if a congressional delegation came to Pyongyang. The Chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, Sonny Montgomery (GA), held a meeting in New York with Ho to discuss the North Korean proposal. Montgomery acted affirmatively and formed a congressional delegation that visited Pyongyang. The protocols for the return of the remains were arranged between the KPA and the UNC in three days of meetings, 15–17 May 1990. On 28 May 1990, with Congressman Montgomery presiding, the North Koreans returned five sets of remains. UNCMAC received the remains from the KPA at Panmunjom and a UNC Honor Guard provided full military honors. This was the first transfer of Korean War U.S. remains in 36 years from the DPRK. The remains were then sent to CILHI for identification.

Other members of Congress made overtures to help build momentum for this nascent initiative, including Senators Phil Gramm (TX), John McCain (AZ), and Robert Smith (NH). Senator Smith traveled to Pyongyang in June 1991 to meet with the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Kang Sok Ju, and observed the handover of 11 sets of remains from the KPA to UNCMAC at Panmunjom on 24 June 1991. He met with Kang again in September 1991 in New York to suggest that a Department of State–proposed multilateral commission be established. The commission would have Korea-based MAC membership, although it would technically be outside of the MAC. Heretofore the North Koreans had rejected such a body, insisting that only a U.S./DPRK bilateral mechanism would be supportable. Kang was cordial but noncommittal to the proposal. Kang did offer to get some information on the status of nonrepatriated Korean War POWs, which Smith had asked about during the first meeting.

In November 1991, the U.S. political counselor in Beijing met with his DPRK counterpart, Pak Sok Gyun. In that meeting the North Koreans reiterated their position that the remains recovery effort should be bilateral, not multilateral as was suggested by the United States. Pak also stated twice that there “was not a single POW alive in the DPRK,” an apparent response to the Senator Smith’s requests from June.

Four months later at Panmunjom, North Korean military officers with the MAC told UNCMAC counterparts that the DPRK was prepared to return 30 additional sets of U.S. remains. A remains return protocol meeting was held 19 April 1992 by the MAC Secretaries at Panmunjom, and the remains were turned over on 13 May and 28 May 1992 in two groups of 15. Significantly, there was no condition attached to the return of the remains. The ceremonies were conducted by the UNCMAC with participation of personnel from the ROK.

Research and Investigative Effort Involving the Former USSR

In December 1991 Russian President Boris Yeltsin met with Senators John Kerry and Robert Smith, Co-Chairmen of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIAs, during a U.S.–Russia summit in Washington, DC. In that meeting he suggested that the two countries form a joint commission to investigate the loss of American service members on or adjacent to Soviet territory, or in Soviet control, from 1945 to 1991. Also during this visit, Yeltsin stated that U.S. POWs had been transferred to the Soviet Union.

The Yeltsin statement generated predictable interest by the U.S. government. The Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Directorate for East Asia and the Pacific Region engaged the RAND Corporation to conduct a study to determine whether any American POWs were being held against their will in the former USSR. Researchers with RAND and subsequently with Defense Forecasts International traveled to archives in the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and the Baltic states in search of information on Americans potentially held against their will. The study was also responsive to congressional legislation, Public Law 102-183, Section 406, calling for DoD to report on efforts to resolve cases of persons classified as missing since World War II and Korea. RAND’s finding on the extent of prisoner transfers to the Soviet Union, published in 1994, suggested a small number of unnamed Americans, possibly around 50, were taken to the former Soviet Union during the Korean War.

A significant result of the Yeltsin summit was the formation of the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs (USRJC) in early 1992, created as a bilateral mechanism for investigating matters concerning the presence of American servicemen on the territory of the former Soviet Union. On the American side, there were representatives from the legislative branch (Senators Kerry and Smith, Representatives Douglas B. Peterson and Jon Miller, former POWs) and the executive branch (State, Defense, Intelligence, and Archives), under the chairmanship of former Ambassador to the USSR Malcolm Toon.

The Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel organized Task Force Russia, a 40-person investigative arm, to support the U.S. side of the commission, with offices in Moscow and Washington. The Russian side of the commission, headed by General Colonel Dmitri Volkogonov, included members from the Russian archives, Federal Security Service, and the Russian Presidential Commission on POWs, Internees, and Missing in Action.

The USRJC held quarterly plenary sessions in Moscow and also visited the capitals of many of the states of the former USSR and Prague, meeting political leaders and top defense, foreign policy, and intelligence officials. In television and radio appearances, Mr. Toon made appeals to citizens who might have knowledge on American POW/MIAs. The Russians allowed U.S. investigators to interview Soviet veterans from the Korean War (and the Cold War and the Vietnam War) but did not authorize access to archives deemed key by the U.S. side for determining whether Americans had been sent to the USSR.

Research by the U.S. side found several Soviet archival documents that recorded discussions on the POW situation and the cease-fire agreement. The notion of withholding prisoners was an item of discussion. Stalin had a concern that UN-held Chinese POWs would be
released to Chaing Kai Shek instead of being returned to the People’s Republic of China; he proposed to Chou En Lai in a meeting in 1952 that if the Americans did not return all Communist POWs, then the North Koreans and Chinese should hold back the same percentage until the issue was decided.

Following a year and a half of investigation, the U.S. side of the commission published a 77-page report, “The Transfer of U.S. Korean War POWs to the Soviet Union.” The primary goal of the report was to show the Russians that a body of information existed suggesting that the Soviets had taken Americans to the Soviet Union. While that information was circumstantial, the report caused the Russians to publicly admit that the possibility of the transfers could not be dismissed, a notion heretofore denied.

The investigations by the commission on the POW transfer issue continued through the 1990s, with plenary sessions held at least annually, augmented by technical talks between plenums. Co-chairmen changed with the death of General Volkogonov and the retirement of Ambassador Toon. In January 1996, General-Major Zolotarev took over the Russian side, and in December 1998, Major General Roland Lajoie (USA, Retired) succeeded Ambassador Toon. Significant report results were issued in May 1995 and June 1996. In the 1995 joint USRJC interim report on the work of the commission, the Korea section stated,

Despite the fact that no conclusive evidence has been discovered that American POWs were transferred into the former Soviet Union, the working group continues its search for new data which would substantiate such an hypothesis.”

The second report, issued in June 1996, was a U.S. side, unilateral comprehensive report on the work of the commission to date. This report stated, “the U.S. side of the Joint Commission on POW/MIA Affairs has collected a significant amount of information that suggests there is a high probability that during the Korean War American POWs were transferred from Korea to the Soviet Union.”

The Compensation Issue

Recall from earlier discussion that the North Koreans had passed to the UNC 46 sets of remains between 1990 and 1992. At the 28 July 1992 meeting of the MAC, the North Koreans requested compensation for costs incurred in exhuming and storing those 46 sets of remains. While the North Koreans relented to the UNC position that remains issues were under the MAC purview, they still opposed having UNC soldiers conducting remains recovery operations in North Korea. Through the fall and into the spring of 1993 both sides staffed a draft memorandum of understanding and negotiated the compensation issue. The North Korean demand for the remains was five million dollars. The UNC countered with an estimate of $400,000; that figure was grounded in a long-standing U.S. policy that the U.S. would pay for fair and reasonable expenses incurred in the process of remains recovery. It was not a single dollar figure for each set of remains.

During this time Senator Smith, accompanied by staff members and a Department of State, East Asia Pacific Office, representative, visited Pyongyang. He attempted to get clarification on the live POW issue, requesting to have contact with any Americans held back after armistice. The North Korean reply was that there were no Americans. Vice Minister Kang responded that any prisoners would have gone to China or the Soviet Union. Smith also requested access to DPRK POW archives; Kang replied that China controlled the U.S. POWs and had most of the written records.

Finally, after eight months of negotiations on the memorandum of understanding wording and dollar amounts, both MAC secretaries in a series of meetings held 8–20 June 1993 agreed to an amount of $897,304 with the proviso that it would not set a precedent for future compensation. The agreement opened the way for a 12 July 1993 repatriation in Panmunjom of an additional 17 U.S. war dead.

The actual compensation payout date was 24 August 1993, which concluded with the signing by both parties of an “Agreement on Remains – Related Matters.” In this new climate of cooperation the North Koreans returned 131 total sets of remains in November and December 1993 and 14 the following September. Prior to the September repatriation, the North Koreans brought up the compensation issue for those returns handed over after the initial 46. Their $4 million undocumented compensation claim was countered with a $262,000 figure given by the UNC, an offer the KPA rejected.

The compensation negotiations went on in the backdrop of a new issue in the peninsular security dynamic. The North Korean nuclear reactor at Yongbyon in northwest DPRK was not only a major item of concern for the security and safety interests for the ROK, but also for worldwide counterproliferation. The buildup of conventional mobile ground forces and long-range artillery and rocket forces since the mid-1980s was also a major concern. In 1994, the Clinton administration sent presidential envoy Jimmy Carter to diffuse tensions. In an 18 June 1994 meeting, with prompting from Carter, President Kim Il Sung agreed that the DPRK would accept joint recovery operations (JROs). The KPA reaffirmed this at Panmunjom six days later in a MAC meeting.

The importance of the JROs emerged in this time frame as a critical element of any successful effort for getting resolution in Korean War cases. In fact, the UNC on 13 September 1994 asked the KPA at Panmunjom to halt unilateral recoveries. The U.S. Army CILHI, which had been examining remains turned over since 1990, encountered substantial problems in their identification effort. Of the 208 sets returned by 1994, only four had reached resolution by that time (and only eight total by the summer of 2000). Problems in identification were articulated in a joint U.S. Army CILHI/DPRK scientists’ meeting arranged by the UNC and held in Panmunjom in January 1994. The remains turned over by the North Koreans had significant commingling problems, identification media switching, and destruction evident from the excavation process.

The agreed framework of October 1994, intended to help stabilize the security situation on the peninsula, also called for the cooperation of North Korea on a range of issues, among them the resolution of Korean War losses. Nevertheless, the North Koreans would not discuss future recovery operations until compensation for the 1993 and 1994 remains returns was resolved. Through the fall of 1994, the North Koreans rebuffed a U.S. offer of $262,000 and later refused a February 1995 offer of $1 million. In December 1994 the North Koreans also turned down an offer to visit CILHI—this proposal was made to reinforce the message passed at the January 1994 CILHI/DPRK scientists’ meeting, which was to improve KPA understanding of the exacting standards and procedures used by the United States in identifying remains and to allay any suspicions of ulterior U.S. motives in North Korea.

In July 1995 a governmental interagency task force established by direction of the National Security Council, reached a consensus that the United States should explore all available channels to further the remains recovery effort. That event signaled a new era in the POW/MIA effort in Northeast Asia.

On 24 July 1996, at Benchmark 131, three miles west of Unsan, DPRK, a U.S. Army CILHI search and recovery team and a DPMO liaison officer were working tirelessly in the North Korea summer heat to clear out successive layers of brown soil on a hill overlooking the Nammyon River Valley. The team was in its third week of operations in North Pyonggan Province in far northwest North Korea. The preceding 14 days they had virtually dismantled a hill overlooking a reservoir in search of the remains of an F-80C pilot but could not find a trace. This new hill was the site of a forward outpost of Company G, 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, according to 8th Cavalry Regiment Periodic Information Reports found by researchers from DPMO in the U.S. Army Military History Institute in Carlisle, PA. The outpost had been occupied on 31 October and 1 November 1950, then abandoned because of overwhelming pressure from Chinese forces. A North Korean civilian witness mentioned to KPA investigators that his father had buried an American on this hill in 1950. A test pit revealed human remains and American military artifacts, including a coffee packet and loose standard U.S. issue 30 caliber rounds. Six days later, the remains of a G Company, 8th Cavalry Regiment soldier were repatriated at Panmunjom with full military honors. Two months later the soldier’s remains were identified and returned to his sister in Louisiana.

The aforementioned joint recovery ,operation (JRO) ushered in a new era in the POW/MIA accounting effort with North Korea. The U.S. government and the UNC had worked hard to lift the barriers that hindered progress in the issue prior to this event. Only months prior to the first ever

Chapter 2: Opening the Door to Northeast Asia

JRO in the DPRK the North Koreans and the UNC were still at an impasse on compensation for 162 sets of remains returned in 1993 and 1994. It was clear that central to any more breakthroughs in the POW/MIA effort in Northeast Asia would be the resolution of the compensation issue.

Development of the U.S./North Korea Bilateral Channel

As mentioned in the previous chapter, an interagency meeting in Washington held under direction of the National Security Council (NSC) in July of 1995 resulted in the decision to explore all available channels to further the POW/MIA effort in Korea. The first opportunity came when the North Koreans, through UN Mission Minister/Counselor Han Song Ryol, contacted the Department of State Asia Pacific (Korea) office and inquired if the UNC invitation for DPRK representatives to visit Hawaii was still open. The response was affirmative and the North Koreans made formal notification of intent to visit there on 14 December 1995.

By direction of the NSC, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs chose James D. Wold, Brigadier General, U.S. Air Force (Retired) and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (DASD) for POW/MIA affairs, to head the U.S. delegation to Hawaii. This marked the first time such an event was to be led by a senior-level DoD representative. It was also the first off-peninsula discussion dealing solely with Korean War POW/MIA issues. The U.S. side included Department of State, UNC, United States Forces Korea (USFK), U.S. Army Casualty and Mortuary Affairs Operations Center (CMAOC), and CILHI representation. The North Korean delegation, headed by Ambassador Kim Byong Hong, the disarmament and peace director, included representation from the KPA mission in Panmunjom and a North Korean anthropologist from the Academy of Social Sciences.

The two delegations met in Honolulu, 10–14 January 1996. The Honolulu venue was key to demonstrating to the North Koreans the exacting procedures used by CILHI to conduct recovery and identification of remains. During the talks the United States pressed the North Koreans for the establishment of combined U.S.-North Korean teams to conduct search and recovery operations in the north. The U.S. delegation also brought up the issue of reports of live Americans from the Korean War era living in Pyongyang, a topic met with North Korean denials. The North Koreans continued to press for compensation, demanding $3 million for their 162 unilateral recoveries in 1993 and 1994.

A forensic orientation for the North Korean delegation took place during the meeting. The North Korean anthropologist suggested that the United States was deliberately withholding remains identifications for political reasons. Once the CILHI recovery and identification procedures were demonstrated, the North Koreans admitted offline that their side had done some haphazard remains collection and handling. The U.S. delegation also provided the North Koreans a tour of a U.S. Air Force base, including the flight line, in hopes that the goodwill gesture would be reciprocated in North Korea when the U.S. teams deployed.

The third day of the talks, the outline for an agreement had been reached. The United States would pay $2 million in February 1996 for uncompensated expenses for remains recovery and handling. The U.S. side would be allowed to preposition equipment in North Korea for two joint recovery operations to take place before the end of June 1996. But on the final day of talks the North Koreans balked, saying another round of talks would be needed before they would agree to conducting JROs. It was clear to the U.S. negotiators that the DPRK team was not yet prepared to reach a final agreement. As a result, the U.S. delegation opted to walk away from the discussions to allow the North Koreans time to develop a coordinated KPA/Ministry of Foreign Affairs position.

Although the first round of talks failed to reach agreement, much momentum was gained, and within a month, Ambassador Han at the UN mission signaled to the Department of State, East Asia Pacific Office, that the North Koreans were ready for another round of talks. In an apparent concession, the North Korean government also announced that it was dismantling its remains recovery team. The respective heads of delegation for the second meeting were the same as those in Hawaii three months earlier. The Grand Hyatt in New York was the venue, and 4–7 May 1996 was the scheduled time frame. Finally on 9 May, after both sides opted for extending the talks, they reached agreement on the $2 million compensation payout for late May and technical discussions on JRO modalities in the first half of June. The North Koreans stated publicly following the meeting that technical talks in June would lead to recovery operations later in the year. True to their word, the U.S. government, through the UNCMAC, made the compensation payout 20 May 1996 at Panmunjom.

The Perry Proclamation and U.S. Congressional Interest

The U.S. resolve for achieving POW/MIA accounting in Korea was reaffirmed in May 1996 when Secretary of Defense William Perry issued a policy proclamation calling for DoD to apply the necessary resources to conduct remains search and recovery and identification. He assigned the secretary of the U.S. Army the responsibility for conducting this effort. The proclamation is cited below:

DOD POLICY FOR KOREAN WAR ACCOUNTING

There are over 8,100 American servicemen who never returned home from the Korean War. Many of these men were buried in North Korea in temporary cemeteries or died in captivity. Many died on the battlefields and their remains could not be recovered. Others simply disappeared, their fates unknown. The potential exists to recover and identify significant numbers of remains and to resolve the fates of many of these men.

At the dedication of the Korean War Veterans Memorial, President Clinton reaffirmed this nation’s commitment to resolving the fates of these men. At that time he declared, “We have not forgotten our debt to them or to their families and we will never stop working for the day when they can be brought home.”

Accordingly, it is the policy of the DoD that efforts to resolve the case of our Korean War unaccounted for should receive a high priority. To accomplish this, the Department and the Services will dedicate resources commensurate with the tasks of developing and maintaining an accurate list of unaccounted for Korean War personnel, reestablishing contact with their families, and, in the longer term, preparing to identify them should we gain access to North Korea and recover their remains. Per DoD Directive 5110.10, dated July 16, 1993, the Defense POW/MIA Office will serve as the focal point for these efforts, providing policy oversight for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, ensuring effective coordination with the Services and relevant interagency components, including the Departments of State and Veterans Affairs, the National Security Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency. The Army, with the appropriate support from all services as DoD Executive Agent for Mortuary Affairs, will act as the lead operational agent for recovery and identification of remains.

Also at this time in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Military Personnel Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee took great interest in the new developments in North Korea and held hearings on the status of the POW/MIA issue with the Departments of State and Defense in June and October of 1996. The Missing Persons Act came into law as well, which, for the Korean War, set a number of information handling guidelines for DoD for the development of individual case files on those men still unaccounted-for.

Joint Recovery Operations

From 9–15 June 1996, technical discussions took place in Pyongyang with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and the KPA. The U.S. delegation was the first official Defense department team to visit Pyongyang. It was headed by J. Alan Liotta, Deputy Director, DPMO and accompanied by the commander of CILHI, Colonel Bill Jordan, U.S. Army. Senior Colonel Pak Rim Su, Deputy KPA Panmunjom Mission and long-standing front man on the POW/MIA issue, headed the North Korean side. The sides agreed on two joint recovery operations, an F-80C site in Unsan County and a B-29 site in Ryonggang County near Nampo City. The North Koreans chose these two sites from a combined DPMO/CILHI-generated list of 12 air crash sites in various provinces.

The first JRO was to take place 10–30 July 1996 with an advance team arriving 2 July. The North Koreans authorized an eight-man search and recovery team and a two-man DPMO/Department of State liaison team to be housed in Panmunjom. Elaborate details on logistics were hammered out, and the North Koreans agreed on safeguard and storage of CILHI recovery equipment between operations. Significantly the North Koreans agreed to supply 60 laborers for site preparation, base camp security, and witness screening. Included in the package was an on- call helicopter for medical evacuation, if ever needed. Costs incurred by the North Koreans, including labor, came to $80,000, which was to be paid at the end of the operation. Planning on the U.S. end included close coordination with the Treasury Department. Since the DPRK is one of the countries affected by the Trading with the Enemy Act, CILHI was required to have a letter of exception approved by Treasury to conduct any transactions there.

The first joint recovery operation took place as scheduled in Unsan County, and the resulting remains recovery was highlighted at the beginning of this chapter. Liotta had visited the second site, a B-29 crash with nine crewmen, near Nampo City, in May of 1996 when he accompanied U.S. Representative Bill Richardson on a visit to Pyongyang. A disturbing announcement by Senior Colonel Pak at a MAC meeting in Panmunjom on 26 July 1996 did not bode well for the second operation. He linked the second event to Technical talks in Pyongyang, 9-15 June 1996 progress on a KPA proposal to have general officer talks between the KPA and the U.S. military in Korea.

On 18 September 1996 the Republic of Korea (ROK) security forces discovered a Sango midget North Korean submarine run aground off the southeastern coast off South Korea. The ROK government immediately implemented regional security measures, and a two-week manhunt for suspected North Korean infiltrators began. Although the U.S. had sent a letter of intent to conduct the second joint recovery operation the day preceding the submarine incident, the DPRK never responded to the U.S. initiative. That forced the U.S. to cancel the second operation.

The submarine incursion set the recovery program back six months, and it was not until May of 1997 that both sides met again, this time in New York. The heads of delegation once again were DASD Wold and Ambassador Kim. Again the U.S. side included representatives from the UNCMAC, Department of State, CMAOC, and CILHI. The North Korean side included Senior Colonel Pak Rim Su from the KPA.

The United States presented a number of sites for excavation at the talks, including prison camp cemeteries, UN cemeteries, and battlefields. The North Koreans chose the site of a regimental sized battle that took place in November 1950 in which 292 men were still missing—the same general area of the previous year’s recovery. The main contention in the talks involved the attempt to arrive at fair and reasonable expenses for North Korean labor and services performed. It was during these talks that the U.S. persuaded the North Koreans to agree to established compensation formulas, a significant breakthrough. The talks achieved another breakthrough of sorts when the North Koreans agreed to increase the number of operations in 1996 from two to three, which were to take place in July, August, and October. The North Koreans also agreed to allow U.S. representatives into their main military museum in Pyongyang for POW/MIA related research. The North Koreans also authorized a family and veterans service organization visit into the DPRK. Logistics arrangements for the operation were validated in a 25–27 June 1997 New York meeting. The North Korean support package was again robust with 60–80 laborers and mission experts. Compensation for each operation was set at $100,000.

The three operations took place as scheduled. The northwestern edge of the Unsan battlefield was the primary work site, where E and G Companies of the 8 th Cavalry fought the CPV’s 116th Division. The combined U.S. and North Korean team completed six remains recoveries from those operations. During a break in the operations the KPA hosted the first U.S. archival research effort on POW/MIA matters. The head of the North Korean side mentioned to the lead U.S. researcher, Lieutenant Colonel Gregory Man, U.S. Army, that Kim Chong Il had personally directed full cooperation of the staff. To that end the U.S. side was authorized to completely dismantle displays of captured artifacts and weapons for close examination. The U.S. team took more than 300 photos of captured artifacts and identification media during the four-day session.

A five-person family and veterans service organization visit to Pyongyang in October 1997 was the first ever authorized by the North Koreans. This visit allowed the U.S. government to put a human face on the POW/ MIA constituency for the North Koreans. U.S. media also accompanied the team which included visits to recovery sites.

During these summer events tensions on the peninsula heated up again with the exchange of machine gun and mortar fire between ROK and North Korean guard posts in the DMZ and the temporary disappearance of a KPA soldier into the ROK. During the DMZ incident, the U.S. archival team continued its work uninterrupted although the KPA host warned that further provocations could result in the early expulsion of the U.S. archival team.

Establishment of the Annual December U.S./DPRK Talks

A series of DPMO and North Korean UN mission coordination measures led to further talks in December 1997 between DPMO and the MFA and KPA. Deputy Director Liotta headed the U.S. side, which included representation from CMAOC, CILHI, and the UNCMAC. Again the U.S. pressed the North Koreans for access to prison camp cemeteries and battlefield sites. The Koreans did not approve of operations proposals in the POW camps but did choose a potentially lucrative new area near the Chongchon River, the site of intense battles between three U.S. divisions and the CPV in November 1950.

During the meetings, DPMO pressed for North Korean cooperation on resolving outstanding live-sighting reporting. He formally asked for access to U.S. Army deserters in order to help resolve reports of post-war live sightings of alleged U.S. POWs living in North Korea. Colonel Pak forcefully denied that the DPRK was holding Americans and responded to that request by saying the deserters did not want to speak with U.S. government representatives.

Out of the December 1997 talks came an agreement to conduct five operations, two archival research trips, and a family and veterans service organization visit. One of the issues generating momentum was the North Korean desire to eliminate the UNCMAC from the remains repatriation activities. In support of the UNC, the United States stood firm on the Panmunjom UNC/KPA repatriation ceremony protocol. The North Koreans agreed with reluctance and attempted to influence the March 1998 experts meeting on logistics to change the procedures. Further, both sides came to an understanding that each December they would meet to plan out the entire program for the following year. That convention has been followed each year since 1997.

The JROs in 1998 took place from April to November with breaks of several days between each operation. The operations were highly successful, though not without problems. Because of their continuing dissatisfaction with UNCMAC participation in the repatriations, the North Koreans delayed the return of two sets of remains from early May until Memorial Day. The North Koreans also attempted to link the repatriation issue with their desire to have general officer talks with the U.S. in Panmunjom without ROK participation. The United States responded by delaying the first archival mission by a week and by postponing the second operation. Nevertheless all five operations took place as both sides subsequently agreed to dates for a rescheduled second operation.

Possibly because of the postponement of the second operation, the U.S. archival research team was given only minimal access to new identification media and artifacts in the Pyongyang main military museum and a generally cool reception by the KPA hosts, a stark contrast to the previous years work. Nevertheless, the DPRK did grant the team’s request for access to the national library, the People’s Grand Study House, which housed 3,100 pages of commercial KPA battle accounts published in the 1960s. No access was given to materials that would have been much more beneficial, such as shootdown logs and war diaries. Honoring a DPRK request from the first archival trip in 1997, DPMO provided the director of the Pyongyang main military museum with U.S. commercial periodicals on Korean War equipment to improve the accuracy of the museum displays. A scheduled veteran service and MIA family organization visit, which included a tour of the recovery operations area, also took place in October.

A hallmark of the 1998 operations was the use of an advance team to investigate potential sites ahead of the recovery teams. That U.S. modification led to faster acquisition of witnesses and allowed for more excavations to take place in the operations time frame. While the cost of each operation rose to $134,000, largely because of higher fuel costs, the efficiencies achieved with the advance teams led to 22 recoveries for the five operations. A second family and veterans visit also occurred which included visits to recovery sites.

The December 1998 talks in New York were opened by DASD-POW/Missing Personnel Affairs Robert L. Jones. North Korean participation included a representative from the North Korean mission to the UN and the KPA’s Senior Colonel Pak Rim Su of their Panmunjom Mission. The planned operations tempo was increased for the third straight year—a total of six joint recovery operations were planned from April to November, the first three to take place in North Pyonggan Province (in northwest North Korea). The locations of the second three were to be determined at a midpoint meeting. The U.S. team size increased from 10 to 12 persons to allow for the advance investigative team effort and for vehicle maintenance mechanics. Concerning the repatriation issue, the North Koreans agreed to abide by protocols from past JRO repatriations, which also were in accord with guidelines established by the Armistice Agreement. Both sides agreed that any changes would need to be made under MAC purview at Panmunjom.

The first operation of 1999 resulted in six recoveries from the Chongchon River battle area. The third archival trip (the first two were conducted in 1997 and 1998) also went into Pyongyang (with a side trip to Sinchon) at the end of March for a week to examine previously unseen U.S. Korean War MIA identification media located in the main military museum in Pyongyang. Ominously, the North Koreans began signaling that they would not repatriate recovered remains through Panmunjom. Nevertheless, at the end of the first operation, they did conduct repatriations through the established protocols as was assured to DPMO Deputy Director Liotta while visiting the first JRO. DPMO reiterated to the North Koreans that any changes to the established procedures would have to be brokered between them and the UNC.

The North Koreans suspended the second JRO midway because of fuel delivery problems. They also refused to repatriate four sets of recovered remains through Panmunjom.The KPA, in the interest of separating the UNC from the issue, developed three alternatives for repatriation in May 1999: repatriation through Panmunjom to a senior DoD representative, repatriation through Panmunjom using the CILHI team as the honor guard from the north side, or repatriation through Pyongyang by North Korean or Chinese aircraft to a location outside of the peninsula. Unfortunately, the KPA would not discuss these three methods with the UNC.

In consultations with the USFK and the National Security Council, DPMO began canceling joint recovery operations to allow for time for the North Koreans to review their decision on repatriations and honor the December 1998 agreement. There was no value seen to continuing operations only to have unrepatriated remains collect at Panmunjom to add to the problem. Operations were effectively suspended from June until September 1999. DPMO efforts to bring the North Koreans into compliance through their UN mission were unsuccessful. One last effort directed by the NSC to the UNC to bring up the issue in a Panmunjom MAC meeting failed to materialize.

Because it was evident that U.S. efforts to resolve the repatriation issue through Panmunjom or New York would continue to meet with gridlock, the NSC held a deputies committee meeting on 1 October 1999 to weigh various options. From this meeting the NSC directed DPMO to meet directly with the KPA to come to agreeable repatriation terms. In New York, the MFA, on behalf of the KPA, met with Liotta and came to an agreement to repatriate the four sets of remains of U.S. servicemen via military airlift at Pyongyang Sunan Airport.

This repatriation occurred on 25 October 1999. A UNC honor guard aboard a C-17 cargo aircraft conducted the repatriation; a CILHI team ready to conduct the last operation offloaded. Also during the event, DASD Jones met with Lieutenant General Li Chong Bok, the senior KPA representative at Panmunjom. Talks were cordial and Li mentioned that operations in a new area, the Chosin Reservoir, could be possible for 2000. Li requested that the United States look into alternate means of compensation for JRO North Korean labor support and suggested the United States substitute a humanitarian aid package, namely clothing for North Korean children. DPMO agreed to look into possible ways to accomplish this.

The year’s operations, although substantially interrupted, ended on a high note with a November 11 repatriation of another three sets of remains from the last JRO, again on the tarmac of Sunan Airport in Pyongyang. Moreover, U.S.–North Korean relations took a big step with the publication of the Perry Report. Former Secretary of Defense William Perry was the president’s policy advisor to North Korea. His year-long examination of all aspects of U.S. policy toward North Korea resulted in his recommendation to ease sanctions on the country if the DPRK fulfilled steps to reduce tensions. This allowed for the flow of limited commerce between the countries for the first time.

At the 13–17 December 1999 Berlin talks to establish the year 2000 program, DASD Jones and Li led off with a discussion on compensation for joint recovery operations. The North Koreans presented detailed requirements for humanitarian aid, which included materials for a clothing factory. Jones responded to Li that legally only the Department of State could act on such requests and in fact the Department of State, East Asia Pacific Office, had recently called the North Korean UN mission on this requirement to get more information. The North Koreans also offered to establish a nationwide bureaucracy from the central government down to county level to conduct remains searches, to be funded in part by the United States. The stage set, Jones and Li agreed to allow their negotiators to come to specifics but cautioned that DoD could not act on humanitarian aid package requirements. The U.S. side again pressed for access to the Chosin Reservoir and the prison camp UN cemeteries while the DPRK offered further access to the Chongchon River. In general, however, the North Koreans indicated they were not authorized to allow a program for year 2000 without a robust U.S. humanitarian aid package. While no agreement was reached at these talks, the North Koreans called DPMO in January 2000 for renewed dialogue, inviting the U.S. delegation to come to Pyongyang to investigate four or five new unilateral recoveries and that the North Koreans had announced in a press release. Their announcement of the discovery of remains during land reclamation work in North Pyonggan Province came on the heels of a 21 January 2000 search and recovery mission conducted by CILHI in the ROK side of the DMZ in western Chorwon. Both sides suggested a meeting to get the talks on track and discuss the North Korean remains recovery, but by the spring of 2000 the venue and agenda were still under discussion.

Following the Berlin meeting, DPMO representatives traveled to Seoul to discuss USFK proposals to conduct search and recovery operations in the south. At this meeting, DPMO agreed with the USFK and ROK Ministry of National Defense (MND) to form a working group to develop sites for future recovery work. In a March 2000 meeting, the two sides presented their remains recovery programs coinciding with the Korean War 50 th anniversary commemoration. CILHI presented its plan for conducting three recovery operations for the year, and DPMO explained the merits of its oral history program, suggesting the ROK MND might come across information on U.S. losses in their search for witness information. The U.S. delegation further asked the ROK MND to staff a draft memorandum of understanding addressing future remains recoveries in South Korea. Both sides agreed to notify the other of planned recovery efforts in the south in the event that remains of the Korean War allies were found. Deputy Director, J. Alan Liotta and MND representative Brigadier General Kim Kyoing Duck later signed the MOU in Seoul during a joint meeting on 24 June 2000.

In May DPMO and the KPA agreed to a meeting of their senior representatives in Kuala Lumpur from 6-8 June with no preconditions. From this meeting Mr. Liotta and Senior Colonel Pak came to a five-operation agreement. Unsan and Kujang Counties of North Pyonggan Province were the designated operational areas, where the North Koreans indicated they had discovered four or five remains while engaged in land reclamation projects. The time frame for the operations was 25 June to 11 November.

This meeting was highly significant, as it had broken a six-month deadlock in the POW/ MIA program with North Korea. In addition, the U.S. team increased from 14 to 20 members in order to allow for investigative elements to have Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) and Medical Aid man capabilities.

In September 2000, the DASD for POW/ Missing Personnel Affairs met with Senior Colonel Pak Rim Su in Pyongyang. During this visit he accepted nine sets of remains from the third JRO and in discussions with the North Koreans, reemphasized the need for the JRO effort to expand into the Chosin Reservoir and the UN registered cemeteries and POW camps. The North Koreans continued to express desires for the U. S. side to provide a robust humanitarian aid package, in addition to JRO compensation.

Also in September 2000, Mr. Liotta accompanied by JCS and CILHI representatives, traveled to Pyongyang to discuss technical issues. While humanitarian compensation issues continued to be a problem for the North Koreans, the U.S. team was allowed for the first time to visit the Chosin Reservoir to survey potential recovery sites for 2001. Joint recovery operations in 2000 were highly successful, doubling the recovery rate for any previous year since the beginning of the program in 1996.