U.S. lawmakers urge POW return from North Korea

WASHINGTON (AFP) -- A U.S. House of Representatives panel on Wednesday unanimously approved a symbolic resolution calling on North Korea to return U.S. and South Korean prisoners of war and any civilian detainees.

The bill, adopted by House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, urges North Korea to release any such prisoners and admit to abducting more than 100,000 South Korean civilians, reveal their status, and free them.

It also presses the U.S. government to resume search and recovery operations in North Korea for the remains of American soldiers killed during the Korean conflict of 1950-1953.

And it recommends that the United States and South Korea jointly look into reports of sightings of U.S. prisoners of war or those listed as missing in action.

The measure “recognizes the plight of the American and South Korean prisoners of war and civilian abductees still alive in North Korea,” said the committee’s chairman, Republican Rep. Don Manzullo.

“Families still do not have the closure they deserve after so many years, and it is time North Korea told the truth about their whereabouts,” Manzullo said in a statement.

The U.S. Defense Prisoner of War and Missing Personnel office lists 7,978 U.S. service members as unaccounted for in the wake of the Korean conflict, according to its official website.

The U.S. government suspended joint field operations in North Korea on May 25, 2005, after roughly a decade in which 33 such efforts resulted in the recovery of more than 225 likely U.S. remains, 78 of which have been identified and returned for burial in U.S. soil, the office says.