More than 50 boxes handed over by North Korea last week appear to hold human remains from the 1950-1953 Korean War and are likely American, according to an initial forensic analysis, a US official.
More than 50 boxes handed over by North Korea last week appear to hold human remains from the 1950-1953 Korean War and are likely American, according to an initial forensic analysis, a US official said on Wednesday.
"There is no reason to doubt that they do relate to Korean War losses," John Byrd, a forensic anthropologist with the US Department of Defense, told reporters at Osan air base in South Korea, just before the remains were due to be flown to Hawaii for further analysis and identification.
On Friday, an American military transport aircraft flew the remains from the North Korean city of Wonsan, a first step in implementing an agreement reached at a landmark summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump in June.
Trump said North Korea had returned on June 20 the remains of 200 U.S. troops missing from the Korean War, although there was no official confirmation of the move from military authorities.
"We got back our great fallen heroes, the remains sent back today, already 200 got sent back," Trump told a crowd of supporters during a rally in Duluth, Minnesota.U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Tuesday that in coming days North Korea would hand over a "sizeable number" of remains to United Nations Command in South Korea, and they would then be transferred to Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii.
Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at a historic summit last week in Singapore, and said in a news conference afterwards that Kim had agreed to return the remains of U.S. soldiers.About 7,700 U.S. military personnel remain unaccounted from the 1950-1953 Korean War, US military data show. According to the Pentagon, North Korean officials have indicated in the past that they have the remains of as many as 200 US troops. More than 36,500 U.S. troops died in the conflict.
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