Remains of Korean War soldier to be buried

U.S. Army Cpl. Patrick R. Glennon will be buried this week at Arlington National Cemetery, six decades after he was apparently killed during heavy fighting with Chinese forces in the Korean War, the Department of Defense said Monday.

Glennon was listed as missing on Nov. 1, 1950, while holding a defensive position near Unsan, a North Korean town close to the border with China, according to the department‘s POW/Missing Personnel Office.

In 2007, the North handed over six boxes of remains of American service members to then-New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony Principi, who were visiting the communist nation, it said.

“Metal identification tags bearing Glennon’s name, and other material evidence were included with the remains,” the office said.

To identify the remains, it added, scientists from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory used circumstantial evidence and forensic identification tools such as dental records and mitochondrial DNA, which matched Glennon‘s cousins.

His remains will be buried at the national cemetery on the outskirts of Washington on Wednesday “with full military honors,” it said.

More than 7,900 U.S. troops remain unaccounted for from the 1950-53 Korean War and 5,500 of them are estimated to be missing in North Korea, according to official data.

The U.S. and North Korea began working together to locate their remains in 1996. The effort came to a halt in 2005 after Washington took issue with the safety and security of its workers.

The two sides agreed to resume the joint search this spring but the U.S. has suspended the project following the North’s announcement of a plan to launch a long-range rocket in mid-April. (Yonhap News)