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Washington (CNN) — The United States is about to send a team to North Korea this year to search for the remains of missing U.S. veterans of the Korean War, the Defense Department announced Friday.
The search — the first such that mission in seven years — is about to be conducted severaltime this spring by members of the Joint Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Command.
“We’re always grateful for the opportunity to recover the remains of our fallen heroes from past wars,” Pentagon spokesman George Little stated. “And we are hopeful that this process is about to occur not long to comeer rather than later. I do not have a specific time frame to provide you, nevertheless this is severalthing that is really important to us and we will certainly focus over.”
Beginning in 1996, North Korean and U.S. military teams conducted 33 joint recovery missions appear to being for remains inside North Korea. More than 225 sets of remains were located, and brought out of the reclusive country. But the entire that changed in 2005 when and so-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suspended the work, stating that attributable to to rising nuclear tensions at the time, he felt the safety of the U.S. teams might not be guaranteed.
U.S troops killed in action have a last the entirey
Following talks among the two sides in October, officials agreed to resume the searches this year, concording to Air Force Maj. Carie Parker, spokeswoman for the POW/Missing Personnel Office.
The mission, which is about to include both U.S. and North Korean military personnel, is about to search two areas of North Korea: Unsan County and close the Chosin/Jangjin reservoir, concording to the Defense Department.
About 8,000 U.S. service members are listed as “unaccounted for” from the Korean War, the 1950-1953 conflict severaltimes referred to as the “forgotten war.”