Pyongyang interested in U.S. remains recovery

WASHINGTON - North Korea has “responded” to the U.S. government’s push to resume recovery of the remains of American soldiers killed during the Korean War, a U.S. government official said Tuesday.

The U.S. Department of Defense recently sent a letter to Pyongyang “indicating interest in discussing the resumption of remains recovery” in the North, according to Maj. Carie Parker of the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office, which is affiliated with the department.

“The North Korean government has now responded to the DoD letter, and the DoD is in communication with North Korea to discuss the next steps for the resumption of remains recovery operations,” she told Yonhap News Agency.

The move comes after Pyongyang and Washington restarted high-level talks in late July on the communist nation’s nuclear weapons program and bilateral relations.

Last week, the United States announced a plan to provide $900,000 worth of emergency relief materials to the flood-ravaged North.

Parker said the U.S. government is actively trying to locate, recover and identify our missing personnel from all wars from World War II forward.

There are 7,988 U.S. servicemen still unaccounted for from the Korean War, and 5,500 of them are estimated to be in North Korea, she said.

Joint recovery efforts between the two sides were suspended.

Yonhap