North Korea Begins 'Immediate Repatriation' of US Troops Remains From Korean War
Kim Jong Un is already making good on a promise he made to President Donald Trump during their historic summit on Tuesday.
Trump appeared on “Fox & Friends” Friday morning and talked to Steve Doocy about the Singapore summit and some of the promises made by the North Korean leader.
The president stated that, at the summit, he asked Kim to return the remains of U.S. troops who died during the Korean War.
“I asked him, the remains, I’d like to get them. He said ‘yes, we will do that.'”
Trump continued, “They are already starting to produce the remains of these great young soldiers who were left in North Korea.”
Approximately 7,800 Americans are unaccounted for from the Korean War.
According to American Military News, about 5,300 of those Americans are believed to have been killed in battles or died in prisoner-of-war camps in North Korea.
Between 1996 and 2005, joint U.S.-North Korea military search teams recovered nearly 230 sets of American remains. Those recovery missions were eventually halted, though, due to safety concerns with North Korea’s rapid nuclear development.
Trump has said, as quoted by NPR, that many families of missing soldiers have been petitioning him to come to an agreement with the North Korean government.
“I must have had just countless calls and letters and tweets, anything you can do, they want the remains of their sons back, they want the remains of their fathers and mothers and all of the people that got caught in that really brutal war,” Trump said.
North Korea’s efforts to repatriate American remains is “serving a useful role, as well as demonstrating what people are looking for in terms of humanitarian reciprocity, measurable steps, eases and ends the uncertainty for the families whose loved ones remains are returned and identified,” Ann Mills-Griffith, the chairman and CEO of the National League of POW/MIA Families, told CNN.
The Korean War technically lasted from 1950-1953, however, because it ended with an armistice and not a peace treaty, it never came to an official end between North and South Korea.
Now, more than 65 years later, it seems the war may really be over.
On April 27, Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae-in, the President of South Korea, met and signed the “Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification on the Korean Peninsula.”
According to a Reuters report on the momentous occasion, “The two leaders solemnly declared before the 80 million Korean people and the whole world that there will be no more war on the Korean Peninsula and thus a new era of peace has begun.”
With Kim Jong Un’s most recent gesture, it seems North Korea really does want peaceful relations with the United States.
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