The Ministry Of Defense Launches A Search For The Family Of Unidentified Korean War Victims

Illustration of the Korean War. (Wikimedia Commons/Work of US Soldier)

JAKARTA - South Korea's Ministry of Defense Authority will launch a search project for families of victims of the 1950-1953 Korean War whose bodies have not been identified starting tomorrow.

The Korea War Victims Recovery and Identification Agency said the project would take place in 25 districts in Seoul throughout October.

The main goal of this project is to categorize the soldiers who died according to their place of origin and address. Later, the list was shared with relevant local authorities to contact their families and identify their bodies.

The agency said it needed to reach about 6,200 family members in the nation's capital, reported The Korea Times September 29.

The families of the fallen soldiers will have the opportunity to participate in the identity confirmation process by providing their DNA samples. In the case where positive identification is carried out using the genetic information provided, the confirmed family will be given 10 million won.

"Along with the increasing number of war veterans and bereaved families, the task of finding the descendants of the soldiers who died became increasingly challenging," said Lee Keun-won, head of the agency.

"We are fighting against time, which makes civil-military cooperation more important than ever before," he said.

Starting in 2021 in South and North Gyeongsang Provinces, the project has contributed to collecting DNA samples from 30,000 bereaved families and identifying the bodies of 4,400 soldiers who died in the war.