Bring Them Home

Over 100,000 South Korean soldiers disappeared - or in military terminology went MIA (Missing In Action) - during the Korean War. They said good-bye to family and friends, went off to fight, and never returned. No one ever saw or heard from them again.

To this day, no one knows when, how, or where they died. In the chaos and destruction of war, their bodies were left on a battlefield, in a trench, or in the ruins of a bombed out building. If “lucky” they were buried by their brothers in arms.

But as the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History's special exhibit, “Bring Them Home” reveals so reverently and poignantly, South Korea's Ministry of National Defense is trying to find them. Since 2007, the Agency for KIA (Killed In Action) Recovery & Identification has found over 10,000 remains.

As I discovered yesterday during my visit to the Seoul museum, the process of finding and identifying bodies is painstaking work.

Digging and scraping at former battle sights looking for human bones is not for the fainthearted. But once found, the bones are analyzed with 3-D scanners, DNA samples are taken, and the process of looking for a family member begins. It’s all very time consuming and costly, but for the 121 men whose remains were identified and returned to their loved ones, it’s well worth it. The long wait is over.

The remaining 10,000 bodies, placed in boxes and labeled with only numbers, are stacked in a large storage facility at Seoul National Cemetery. No one has claimed them.

The exhibit was a stark expose on the enduring pain of war. It was also a reminder that over 7,700 Americans who fought in Korea from 1950-1953 are still unaccounted for - MIA. They, like their Korean brethren, are waiting for someone to “bring them home."

Photo credits: National Museum of Korean Contemporary History