DNA Testing To Begin Immediately on Remains From North Korea, Officials Say

By Terri Moon Cronk, DoD News

WASHINGTON — DNA testing will begin immediately on the 55 boxes of service members’ remains returned to the United States this week from North Korea, where they were contained since the fall of 1950, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency officials told reporters at the Pentagon today.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command conduct an honorable carry ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, Aug. 1, 2018. Carry teams will move 55 transfer cases containing what are believed to be the remains of American service members lost in the Korean War to the DPAA facility at the base for identification. North Korea recently turned over the remains to the U.S. and is the first mass turnover of remains since the early 1990s. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Mikaley Kline

Speaking by phone from the agency’s headquarters in Hawaii, DPAA Director Kelly K. McKeague and chief scientist Dr. John E. Byrd discussed the process for identifying the remains.

McKeague said DNA samples exist for 92 percent of U.S. Korean War service members, and in some cases, dental records also are available and will be used to analyze the remains. Additionally, chest radiographs are available for 75 percent of the Korean War missing in action, which will help when finding chest bones among the remains, Byrd said.

Byrd said the system for processing the remains is “very sophisticated,” and following DNA identities, that information will go into a “mass comparison” for matches. McKeague noted that tests can prove the type of environment in which the service members grew up and the type of water consumed throughout life, which could narrow down what nation the service members are originally from.

“It could be months or years to identify remains without compelling matches to narrow down identities,” Byrd said, adding that he could not predict when identifications will be completed.

“We feel pretty good about identifying those remains over time,” he said. He emphasized that most U.S. troops served in the Army during the Korean War. Additionally, he told reporters, far more Americans than service members from allied nations served in the Korean War.