채윤환
| 2023-07-25 15:59:24
war remains-repatriation
Remains of 7 S. Korean soldiers of Korean War to return home
SEOUL, July 25 (Yonhap) -- The remains of seven South Korean soldiers killed during the 1950-53 Korean War will return home from the United States this week, Seoul's defense ministry said Tuesday, seven decades after the end of the conflict.
A repatriation ceremony for the remains will take place at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii on Tuesday (local time), attended by South Korean Vice Defense Minister Shin Beom-chul, just days before the 70th anniversary of the signing of the conflict's armistice Thursday.
The remains will return home via a KC-330 transport aircraft Wednesday at Seoul Air Base in Seongnam, just south of Seoul. They are set to undergo further identification work through DNA testing and other analysis.
The seven sets of remains are among those that had been sent to the United States after a series of excavation work in North and South Korea. They were confirmed to belong to South Korean soldiers after a joint analysis between South Korean and U.S. officials.
One of the sets had been sent to the U.S. by American officials who conducted excavations in South Korea, while three others were determined to be South Koreans after being disinterred from the graves of unknown Korean War soldiers at the U.S. National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.
The three other sets had been sent to the U.S. after being excavated in North Korea. The two countries have cooperated in excavation projects in the past, including a joint recovery operation from 1996 to 2005.
One of the sets has been confirmed to belong to Pfc. Choi Im-rak, who served in the Korean Augmentation to the United States Army during the war. He died during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir on Dec. 12, 1950, at the age of 19.
With the latest repatriation, South Korea has received 313 sets of remains from the United States on seven occasions since 2012.
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