Remains Recovery Operations
Sent in by Veterans News and Information Services
U.S. and North Korean negotiators have reached an agreement in
which teams in 1999 will jointly recover the remains of Americans
missing in action from the Korean War.
This will be the fourth consecutive year that the United States has
conducted remains recovery operations in North Korea.
The agreement, following four days of negotiations in New York
City led by the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office, expands
similar operations that have been conducted since 1996.
"We've hammered out an agreement that takes us far beyond our
three previous years' operations," said Bob Jones, deputy assistant
secretary of Defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs. "We
formalized the concept of a joint investigation team to locate and
interview witnesses to accelerate the pace of recovery, long before
our excavation teams begin their work. This concept gives us the
potential to recover more remains by using our people more
efficiently," he added.
The two sides agreed on an expanded schedule of six joint
operations between April and November. Operations will begin in
Kujiang and Unsan, where joint teams have previously operated,
with the potential to move to other areas later in the year as
circumstances warrant. Exact site locations will be finalized in
technical meetings in February.
During the past three years, through U.S.-North Korean
agreements, joint teams have recovered the remains of 29 soldiers.
One has been identified by the U.S. Army Central Identification
Laboratory, Hawaii. Forensic examinations are underway for all
the recovered remains. Identifications of additional soldiers are
expected within a few months.
The agreement also included two joint archival reviews, in which
U.S. archivists are granted access to documents relating to U.S.
personnel lost or captured during the war. U.S. researchers
conducted an archival review in museums and records collections
in North Korea during 1997 and 1998.
The U.S. negotiators also continued to press to establish a
mechanism for investigating reports of live Americans living in
North Korea and to interview American defectors in North
Korea.
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