... The two identified soldiers... missing in action afte... the war at the Chosin Reservoir in late 1950...Seoul (ANTARA News) - The remains of 12 South Korean soldiers killed in North Korea during the 1950-53 war were brought home Friday -- the first time the South's war dead have been repatriated since fighting ended.
Twelve boxes containing remains, each of them wrapped in the national flag, arrived at a military airport south of Seoul from the United States, where experts had been identifying them.
President Lee Myung-Bak, Defence Minister Kim Kwan-Jin, and General James Thurman, commander of US forces in Korea, were among those attending a guard of honour ceremony.
The remains were among 226 sets found in North Korea by a US team before Washington halted a joint recovery mission with Pyongyang in 2005.
The Hawaii-based US Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command and South Korean officials later confirmed that 12 were South Korean soldiers.
Two have been identified through DNA provided by their families and will buried at the Daejeon National Cemetery. Efforts will continue to identify the other 10.
The two identified soldiers had been listed as missing in action after one of the major battles of the war at the Chosin Reservoir in late 1950.
Colonel Park Shin-Han, head of the defence ministry's agency handling war remains, said it was the first repatriation of South Korean dead from the North since the 1953 armistice.
According to defence ministry figures, about 138,000 South Korean troops were killed during the three-year conflict. The ministry estimates that 30,000-40,000 of them are buried in the North.
(H-AK)
Editor: Ade P Marboen
Copyright © ANTARA 2012
