North Korean rocket launch stalls GI recovery effort

A Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command team from Hawaii won’t be heading to North Korea this month to recover missing U.S. service members’ remains, as the Pentagon has suspended the effort in the face of a possible North Korean missile test.

Nearly 30 JPAC members were to travel to North Korea in the first return to the secretive nation since 2005, when the Bush administration suspended the searches over the North’s unwillingness to negotiate over its nuclear program, heightened tensions, and the "uncertain environment" they created.

"When there are suggestions that they might launch ballistic missiles, when they make bellicose statements about South Korea and engage in actions that could be construed as provocative, we think that it’s not the right time to undertake this effort," Pentagon press secretary George Little said Wednesday during a briefing in Washington, D.C. "So we’re hopeful that we will get past this period and that we can continue the remains recovery effort."

Little said the U.S. hopes to re-engage with North Korea on the plan, "but it is on hold for the moment." Officials said JPAC team members were due to enter North Korea this month.

Recovery teams were expected to make two trips to North Korea in the spring, and two in the fall, on 45-day missions.

"We have suspended that effort because we believe that North Korea has not acted appropriately in recent days and weeks and that it’s important for them to return to the standards of behavior that the international community has called for," Little said, not specifying when the decision was made.

JPAC, which is at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam and has responsibility for investigating, recovering and identifying U.S. service members missing from past wars, referred questions to the Pentagon.

The suspension of the recovery missions is sure to be a disappointment for the families of missing Korean War vets who want progress on recovery efforts from the 1950-53 war.

A total of 7,965 U.S. service members are missing from the war, with 5,500 believed to be in North Korea, according to JPAC.

The Pentagon announced on Oct. 20 that after three days of talks in Bangkok, the United States and North Korea had reached an agreement to resume the recovery of missing Americans in the North following a seven-year hiatus.

According to JPAC, 229 sets of remains were recovered during U.S. operations to North Korea from 1996 to 2005.

The latest agreement called for JPAC to work in two areas in North Korea — Unsan County, about 60 miles north of Pyongyang, and near the Chosin/Jangjin Reservoir — where more than 2,000 soldiers and Marines are believed to be missing.

"Accounting for Americans missing in action is a stand-alone humanitarian matter, not tied to any other issue between the two countries," the Pentagon said in October.

North Korea was to be paid about $5.7 million for the four recovery operations, the Tampa Tribune said earlier this month, citing a figure provided by Maj. Carie Parker, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon’s Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office.

Parker said the money would be paid as compensation for labor, fuel, food, transportation, water, security and other services.

North Korea said last month it was suspending nuclear and long-range missile testing in exchange for food aid from the United States, then announced March 16 that it would send into space an earth observation satellite to mark the 100th birthday of late President Kim Il Sung.

The planned launch, which North Korea said will take place between April 12 and 16 on a long-range Unha-3 rocket, was condemned by the United States as a ballistic missile test and destabilizing for the region.

President Barack Obama plans to visit on Sunday the fortified demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas during a Nuclear Security Summit hosted by South Korea.

North Korea has said its rocket would travel south, with the first stage falling into the ocean off the west coast of South Korea and the second stage landing east of the northern Philippines.

In June 2009, then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered the towering Sea-Based X-Band Radar missile tracker — which was in Pearl Harbor at the time, and is back in Hawaii now — to sea as North Korea prepared a space launch with Hawaii in the flight path.

Gates also said at the time that Hawaii had the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system to guard against a North Korean missile.