The Patriot Files Forums  

Go Back   The Patriot Files Forums > General > General Posts

Post New Thread  Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Old 10-20-2018, 11:18 AM
HARDCORE HARDCORE is offline
Senior Member
 

Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 10,874
Distinctions
Contributor 
Lightbulb The following is extracted from the ROA Bulletin 10/15/18

POW/MIA Update 117 ► 64 South Korean Soldiers Begin Their Final Journey Home

The remains of 64 South Korean soldiers began their final journey home 27 SEP following a repatriation ceremony in Hawaii that included a front-row audience of American veterans of the Korean War. “I am honored and humbled by the reason we are gathered here this morning for this repatriation ceremony: to pay our respect to the 64 fallen South Korean soldiers who today begin their journey back home,” said Rear Adm. Jon Kreitz, deputy director of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, during the ceremony in a Hickam Airfield hangar. The remains have been at the agency’s labs since being returned following joint recovery operations conducted in North Korea from 1996 to 2005. The remains of roughly 7,700 Americans are still unaccounted for from the Korean War, with about 5,000 of those believed to be in North Korea. In July, North Korea returned 55 boxes containing an unknown number of American remains. DPAA identified two U.S. soldiers from those remains earlier this month. “It is our fondest hope that [South Korea] will be successful in giving these heroes back their names and in reuniting them with their families in their country,” Kreitz said.

Sixty-three of the microwave-sized boxes of remains – each shrouded with a South Korean flag – had been loaded into the hold of a C-130 cargo plane. One box, wrapped in a United Nations flag, was used in the formal transfer from DPAA to United Nations Command to South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense. Taking part in the ceremony were Choo Suk Suh, South Korea’s vice minister of national defense; United Nations Command Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Mark Gillette; and Col. Hak Ki Lee, commander of the South Korea KIA Recovery and Identification agency, known as MAKRI. MAKRI will now continue the work of identifying the remains.


Plans originally called for 65 boxes to be transferred to South Korea, but this summer forensic scientists from MAKRI were able to identify one soldier from DNA samples taken in December 2017, said Jennie Jin, the Korean War project lead for DPAA in Hawaii. Pvt. Yoon Gyeong-hyuk, who was killed in North Korea’s South Pyongan Province, was repatriated in July, she said. DPAA is nearing the end of the identification process for the estimated 200 individuals retrieved from North Korea from 1996-05, Jin said. The task of separating the commingled remains of American and South Korean dead presented a forensic challenge particular to both countries, she said. “My concern is not to send Asian-Americans back to Korea,” Jin said. “[MAKRI’s] concern is they cannot take North Koreans or Chinese into their laboratory. No enemy forces are allowed in their laboratory. So we had two different 13 concerns. During the joint forensic review, they kept asking me, ‘How do you know this is not North Korean or Chinese?’” They came to an agreement over the 64 sets of remains based on DNA evidence, historical records and the search-and-recovery reports, she said.


Initially, DPAA scientists examined the remains for a type of DNA specific to maternal ancestry called mitochondrial, which generally revealed Asian ancestry, Jin said. But because about 100 Americans still missing from the Korean War were of Asian descent, further evidence was needed. “We then looked at all our Asian-American guys to see if they have family reference samples, and, fortunately, almost all of them that are still missing in North Korea have their family DNA on file,” she said. “So we did the matching, and none of them matched the guys we’re sending back to Korea today.” “Then we used historical information to find where these guys were lost, and then we looked at the actual recovery reports,” Jin said. So, for example, if both Asian and American remains were found in a mass grave during the recovery operations, it was a good indicator that those Asians were not North Koreans or the Chinese who fought with them. “We never buried enemy forces with our guys,” she said. “So that was very strong evidence — circumstantial — but pretty strong evidence that these are not the North Koreans or Chinese.” Most of the 64 remains were recovered from sites associated with the Battle of Unsan or the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, both fought in late 1950 in what is now North Korea. As the repatriation ceremony ended, Korean War veteran Jimmy Shin offered a pithy judgment of the affair. “About time,” he said. [Source: Stars & Stripes | Wyatt Olson | September 27, 2018 ++


WASHINGTON, Oct. 3, 2018 —Army Sgt. 1st Class James L. Boyce, killed during the Korean War, was accounted for on Sept. 26, 2018.

In July 1950, Boyce was a member of Company K, 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division, engaged in combat operations against the North Korean People’s Army south of Chonui, South Korea. Boyce could not be accounted-for and was declared missing in action on July 11, 1950.

DPAA is grateful to Department of Veterans Affairs for their partnership in this mission.

Interment services are pending; more details will be released 7-10 days prior to scheduled funeral services.

Boyce’s name is recorded on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, along with the others who are missing from the Korean War. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.

For more information about DPAA, visit www.dpaa.mil, find us on social media at www.facebook.com/dodpaa, or call 703-699-1420/1169.

Boyce’s personnel profile can be viewed at
https://dpaa.secure.force.com/dpaaPr...0000007kTQCEA2


Wesley Morrison
wesm8@aol.com
__________________
"MOST PEOPLE DO NOT LACK THE STRENGTH, THEY MERELY LACK THE WILL!" (Victor Hugo)
sendpm.gif Reply With Quote
Sponsored Links
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is On

All times are GMT -7. The time now is 12:39 AM.


Powered by vBulletin, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.