Summit raises hope of regaining remains

Issue high on U.S.-N. Korea agenda

TOKYO — Now that President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un are expected to hold the first-ever summit between their countries, families are hopeful for a renewed effort to repatriate the remains of thousands of military personnel deemed missing in action and presumed dead from the Korean War.

Nearly 7,800 U.S. troops remain unaccounted for from the Korean War more than six decades ago. About 5,300 were lost in North Korea.

Efforts to recover and return the remains have been stalled for more than a decade because of the North’s development of nuclear weapons and U.S. claims that the safety of recovery teams it sent during the administration of President George W. Bush was not sufficiently guaranteed.

There are indications, however, that Trump may raise the issue directly with Kim when they meet. There is also a chance Kim might return some remains even before the summit, according to analysts. The location and date of the summit have yet to be announced, though officials have suggested the meeting should take place by May.

“Hopefully, the North Koreans will turn over some remains as a goodwill gesture before the summit,” said Bill Richardson, a former U.N. ambassador and New Mexico governor who secured the return of six sets of remains from North Korea in 2007. “This would help enormously to diffuse some tension.”

Frank Metersky, a Korean War veteran and a leading advocate of efforts to recover the remains with Korea Cold War Families of the Missing, one of three main support groups for families of service personnel missing in action, said he has been told by administration officials dealing with the matter that it is tentatively high on the summit agenda.

“The MIA issue, recovery of remains from the Korean War, is the third item on the list if they get to it,” he said by phone from New York. “If the meeting takes place and they get past the nuclear and missile issues, it’s the third item on the agenda.”

Hopes are high that Kim might also be willing to release three Americans of Korean descent the North is now holding for what it calls “anti-state” activities.

North Korea and the United States remain technically at war because the 1950-53 fighting ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. But between 1996 and 2005, joint U.S.-North Korea military search teams conducted 33 joint recovery operations and recovered 229 sets of American remains.

Washington officially broke off the program because it claimed the safety of its searchers was not guaranteed, though the timing appeared linked to the North’s first nuclear test, in 2006. Critics of the program also argued the North was using the deal to squeeze cash out of Washington, calling it “bones for bucks.”

The total cost to the U.S. to carry out the joint missions was $19.5 million.

Talks to restart recovery work resumed under President Barack Obama in 2011, only to fall apart after North Korea launched a rocket condemned by the U.S. as a banned test of ballistic missile technology. There has been essentially no government-to-government progress since.

Richard Downes, president of the Coalition of Families of Korean and Cold War POW/ MIAs, said the North had expressed a willingness to return remains as recently as 2016, when he traveled to Pyongyang with a nonprofit headed by Richardson.

“If progress is made, even without the remains issue being raised, windows may open sometime afterward,” he said in an email.