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U.S. Military prepares to receive soldiers' remains from North Korea

SEOUL, South Korea — More than six decades after the end of the Korean War, the U.S. military is preparing for the remains of some of its soldiers killed in the conflict to finally return home.

North Korea is expected to hand over the remains — believed to belong to some 200 to 250 U.S. servicemen — after President Donald Trump’s historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore on June 12.

During that meeting, Kim committed to returning the remains of U.S. troops recovered from major Korean War battle sites in his country and said he would make way for the “immediate repatriation of those already identified.”

Panmunjom, the “truce village” that straddles the South-North Korean border, is where the remains are expected to be handed over, said Lt. Col. Jennifer Lovett, a U.S. military spokeswoman in South Korea. More coffins will be sent to the village in the coming days.

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Metal caskets were also being readied at the U.S. air base in Osan, South Korea, to prepare for the cross-Pacific journey home. On Saturday, 158 metal coffins were sent to the air base, Lovett said.

“We are getting ready,” she said, adding that it remained unclear when North Korea would deliver the remains to Panmunjom.

The temporary wooden caskets were provided to offer dignified treatment to the servicemen’s remains, as the U.S. military did not know what condition they would arrive in. The preparations were the first indication that the repatriation could be imminent.

Trump raised hopes Thursday when he said, “They’ve already sent back, or in the process of sending back, the remains of our great heroes who died in North Korea during the war.”

The Pentagon’s effort to find and bring home the long-lost U.S. servicemen has been continually stymied by political tensions over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

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But North Korea has suspended all nuclear and missile tests this year and during the summit with Trump, Kim also promised to work toward “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” However, doubts persist that he will hand over his nuclear weapons anytime soon.

North Korea has bitterly protested the annual military exercises staged by South Korea and the U.S. military, which Pyongyang views as a rehearsal for invasion.

To encourage the North to denuclearize, the United States and South Korea agreed to suspend the large-scale joint military exercises slated for August. On Saturday, they announced that two small-scale joint Marine drills scheduled between July and September would also be suspended.

The repatriation of remains would mark the first homecoming from North Korea since the work of U.S. military experts and North Korean workers between 1996 and 2005, who recovered remains believed to be those of more than 220 U.S. soldiers. Those recovery efforts were suspended in 2005 when the relationship between the two nations worsened because of disputes over the North’s nuclear weapons program and as the Pentagon became concerned about the safety of its search teams.

About 5,300 U.S. troops presumed to have been killed in North Korea are still unaccounted for. Even with the full cooperation of the North, recovery efforts are likely to take years.

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Once the remains are sent to South Korea, they will be transferred to Hawaii, where painstaking forensic work must be carried out in order to identify them. In the past, some of the remains of soldiers that were sent to the United States from the North were mingled with the bones of unidentified people and sometimes animals.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Choe Sang-hun © 2018 The New York Times

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