By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
This is the first in a series of articles to mark the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War. The Korea Times interviewed the top South Korean military officer in charge of recovering war remains of fallen heroes. _ ED.
Col. Park Shin-han, head of the nation’s war remains recovery agency, was emotional and expressed mixed feelings about a decade of both accomplishments and failures in recovering the remains of fallen soldiers whom he described as the ``pillar’’ of the country’s development into a global power.
Park, commander of the Ministry of National Defense’s Killed in Action Recovery and Identification (MAKRI), was proud of having improved war remains recovery skills and also establishing an advanced identification lab since excavation from a ``zero base’’ in 2000.
But Park feels sorry and sad for most of the fallen soldiers being still buried in fields and mountains nationwide and being unable to return them to their families decades after the fratricidal war ended.
``In Asia, a 60th anniversary has special meaning, so I’m filled with emotion,’’ Park said in an interview with The Korea Times at his office at the National Cemetery in Seoul Jan. 14,
``For the past 10 years since work to recover war remains started in 2000 to mark the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War, we have achieved a lot, but I still feel ashamed that most of the remains of the fallen are still left in the hills and mountains,’’ he said.
About 138,000 South Korean soldiers lost their lives during the Korean War often called the ``Forgotten War,’’ while nearly 25,000 are listed as missing in action, according to the agency.
More than 130,000 servicemembers have not yet been accounted for, while 8,100 U.S. military personnel are also still missing.
From 2000, the Army led war remains recovery operations _ MAKRI was inaugurated in 2007.
The remains of 3,367 soldiers have been recovered, less than 3 percent of the total unaccounted for from the war.
Of them, the remains of 1,137, about one third of the total, were excavated last year following the opening the new MAKRI headquarters at the National Cemetery in January.
In March, the Office of the Prime Minister and eight other government ministries decided to provide the agency with support measures.
The headquarters has state-of-the-art facilities and equipment for identifying the remains, such as a digital X-ray imager, 3D scanner and DNA sampling instruments.
The identification laboratory helped collected DNA samples from 4,452 family members of last year alone.
The figure represents about half of the total samples that have been secured since 2000.
Park cited the remarks made by Rear Adm. Donna L. Crisp, commander of the U.S. Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action and Accounting Command (JPAC), during a ceremony to mark the opening of MAKRI’s identification lab.