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South Korean President Moon Jae-in paid his “highest respect” to 68 Korean and six American service members “who made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom and peace of the Republic of Korea” some 70 years ago and were repatriated to their home countries in a ceremony Wednesday at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
The first joint U.S.-South Korea repatriation held in Hawaii saw remains of South Korean soldiers from the 1950-53 Korean War that had been in the possession of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency solemnly placed aboard a white Korean government 747 at Hickam.
South Korea, meanwhile, returned the remains of six presumed American service members to the accounting agency for identification.
Three cases with two fallen South Koreans and one American from the war symbolically represented the entire group and were covered in blue flags from the United Nations and then home country flags reflecting the transfer of authority.
Moon, speaking through a translator, said it was “an absolute privilege to be the first Korean president” to participate in such a return held abroad.
“American and Korean heroes are finally returning home to their families after a 70-year-long wait,” he said.
The visit comes with South Korea now a thriving democracy that retains close military and economic ties to the United States but also faces the pull of a rapidly rising China that has sway over North Korea.
Foreign policy expert James Jay Carafano recently co-authored an opinion piece that said “not all U.S. foreign policy ends in a debacle,” in a reference to Afghanistan, noting that the U.S.-South Korea alliance is a “historic success.”
The South Korean president laid a wreath to the fallen Wednesday morning at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl, and awarded posthumous medals to the families of two immigrants to Hawaii, Yonhap News Agency reported.
Kim No-di and Ahn Jong-song had raised funds for independence fighters opposing Japan’s colonial rule of Korea.
South Korean Minister of National Defense Suh Wook accompanied Moon to Punchbowl and was received by an honor guard at the headquarters of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command at Camp H.M. Smith.
Moon was in New York for the United Nations General Assembly session before heading to Oahu. He told those present Wednesday for the repatriation — including the commander of U.S. Forces Korea — that “what our heroes wanted to see on the Korean Peninsula was a complete peace.”
“At the U.N. General Assembly I proposed that the relevant parties gather together and proclaim an end to the Korean War, creating a new chapter of reconciliation and cooperation,” he said.
An armistice was signed in 1953, but a state of war technically still exists between South and North Korea.
Moon said that on June 25, 1950, “at the sound of gunfire signaling the start of a war on the Korean Peninsula,” the U.N. invoked a collective security decision and about 1.95 million “sons and daughters from 22 countries around the world arrived on the Korean Peninsula to defend peace in a faraway country they hardly knew.”
More than 7,500 Americans remain unaccounted for from the Korean War.
Moon noted that two of the South Korean fallen being returned were privates first class who fought at Changjin (Chosin) Reservoir as augmentation forces to U.S. Army’s 7th Division and 32nd Regiment.
“Their noble sacrifice” helped 100,000 refugees maintain freedom — including his own parents, Moon said.
Kim He’su, the great-granddaughter of one of the men and now a 2nd lieutenant in the Republic of Korea Army, flew in for the repatriation to personally carry his remains.
The Battle of the Chosin Reservoir was a “two-week-long bloodbath” in the frigid winter of 1950 that saw 30,000 U.S., Republic of Korea and British troops face 120,000 Chinese soldiers, the Marine Corps said.
DPAA, which searches for, recovers and identifies missing American war dead, has a big identification lab at Hickam.
The six presumed American service members were recovered by South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense Agency for KIA Recovery and Identification, or MAKRI.
The 68 remains returning to South Korea came to the accounting agency from North and South Korea between 1990 and 2018, DPAA said. One resulted from a disinterment at Punchbowl.
Rear Adm. Darius Banaji, deputy director for operations with the accounting agency, said years of joint forensic reviews with MAKRI determined that over 200 sets of remains in the Hawaii lab were those of South Korean soldiers.
Most were repatriated to South Korea in 2018 and last year, he said.
“So today’s ceremony, likely the last of such magnitude, signifies the remaining 68 Republic of Korea service men in the care of” the United States, Banaji said.
Adm. John Aquilino, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told the audience gathered in a hangar at Hickam for the event that, “The Korean War brought our two nations side by side to fight for and defend the values embodied in the ideals of freedom.”
Moon subsequently noted that the Republic of Korea-U.S. relationship “has transformed into a comprehensive alliance that shares a whole range of values” across the political, economic, social and cultural spectrum and favoring freedom and peace, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of Ahn Jong-song, who posthumously received a medal from South Korea President Moon Jae-in.
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