Korea, US to Search DMZ for Missing Soldiers

South Korean and U.S. officials will search the area surrounding the heavily fortified inter-Korean border to look for the remains of South Korean and American troops killed during the 1950-53 Korean War, South Korea's Defense Ministry said Monday.

Over 13,000 South Korean and some 2,000 U.S. troops are believed to be buried inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the world's most heavily armed border, a 4-kilometer wide buffer separating the two Koreas, according to the ministry.

"The joint search will be conducted to help provide valuable experience for future excavation projects inside the DMZ, and it will mark the first search ever inside the DMZ," Yonhap News quoted the ministry as saying in a statement.

The search will last until Nov. 25, involving some 20 officials from the United States Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command and dozens more from South Korea's Agency for KIA Recovery and Identification.

The joint search also aims to find the wreckage of a U.S. fighter jet, an F-84G that is believed to have crashed in March 1953 near a port in the southwestern city of Pyeongtaek, according to the ministry.

Some 100,000 South Korean and 8,100 U.S. troops still remain missing since the end of the Korean War.