SEOUL– South Korea on Friday kicked off work to recover the remains of soldiers killed during the 1950-53 Korean War at another former battlefield site inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) after wrapping up two years of excavation work at a nearby site.
The excavation will take place on White Horse Ridge, a former battle site in the inter-Korean border town of Cheorwon, after the country wrapped up a two-year excavation project at the nearby Arrowhead Ridge in June.
White Horse Ridge is one of the areas where the most casualties were reported during the war. The 15-day conflict there in 1952 left around 960 dead or missing, including troops from the United States, Belgium and Luxemburg, according to government data.
“We will do our best to find every single hero buried somewhere here,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. Nam Yeong-shin said during a ceremony to mark the beginning of the project.
At Arrowhead Ridge, the military recovered a total of 3,092 bone fragments believed to have belonged to 424 deceased troops, according to the ministry.
Under a military tension reduction accord signed on Sept. 19, 2018, South and North Korea agreed to launch a joint project to retrieve the remains of soldiers killed during the Korean War from Arrowhead Ridge. But the South has carried out the work alone since 2019, as the North did not respond to calls for joint work.
Source: Yonhap News Agency