Families of service members gone Missing in Action get answers at annual briefing

More than 400 family members, with relatives who served in the Korean War or the Cold War who never came home, are attending personalized briefings Aug. 15 and 16 in Arlington, Virginia, to get updates on how the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency is progressing on their cases.

"We do this each year because this is part of DPAA's mission, which is to connect and communicate with families of the missing," said Kelly McKeague, director of the DPAA, during a press event Wednesday. "It's a chance for us to provide them updates on their loved one's case, particularly in the backdrop of the Korean War and the Cold War."

The DPAA team was joined by their counterparts from South Korea, the Ministry of National Defense Agency for Killed in Action Recovery and Identification, also called MAKRI, which is a partner in helping DPAA recover remains of American service members.

"I participate in [this] event every year to describe to the bereft family how we are doing, how we are making efforts to find, locate, recover and identify the U.S. servicemen who sacrificed their lives during the Korean War, and it is my great honor to participate in this year's [event]," said Keun-Won Lee, MAKRI's director.

There are about 126 U.S. service members still unaccounted for from the Cold War, and 7,465 U.S. personnel still unaccounted for from the Korean War. McKeague said about 5,300 of those who remain missing from the Korean War are suspected of having been lost in North Korea.

In 2018, 55 boxes of human remains, called "K55," were repatriated from North Korea. According to Kristen Grow, the DPAA Korean War Identification Project lead, about 250 individuals are represented within the K55 remains.

"We have identified 93 U.S. service members from that assemblage to date," she said, adding that within the K55 remains, an additional 88 South Korean soldiers have also been repatriated to South Korea.

"There are believed to be around 69 individuals remaining in the assemblage that we are currently analyzing," she said.

Right now, McKeague said, the relationship with North Korea has diplomatically stalled regarding repatriation of remains from the Korean War. There's been no contact, he said, since 2019.

"The United States government reaches out often to North Korea, on any number of levels, one of which is this particular mission," he said. "There has been no response at all, at all levels of the United States government, in their communications with North Korea."

The U.S. and DPAA, McKeague said, remain ready to continue the mission in North Korea if the North Koreans are willing to cooperate.

"We remain ready to go back to North Korea, as we did for 10 years. We remain ready to use this as a tool of diplomacy, as a humanitarian effort," he said. "But again, it's subject to an agreement by the North Koreans that this is something they would want to do."

In fiscal year 2023, remains of nearly 40 American service members who had been lost during the Korean War were accounted for. The DPAA also continues to work in South Korea to find remains there as well.

The DPAA is holding one-on-one meetings with families of service members lost in the Korean War and the Cold War. Of the more than 400 families expected to attend, more than 95% are families of Korean War service members, McKeague said.

"What's interesting is that of the 434, there are 172 of them that are first-time attendees, which is an extraordinary number," McKeague said. "They're coming to a DOD family meeting update for the very first time. ... They come here, obviously, to receive a general update, but more importantly, they receive an individual case summary update. An analyst from DPAA, along with our service casualty office partner, will sit down with each family and provide them an update to their case."

The primary mission of the DPAA, McKeague said, is to account for the missing. That mission includes repatriating more than 72,000 unaccounted for service members from World War II, more than 1,500 service members from the Vietnam War and more than 7,400 service members from the Korean War.

But the DPAA has another mission as well — and that is to keep the families of those service members informed about the agency's progress, McKeague said.

"This is a national commitment, not only in the United States but also in the Republic of Korea, where we believe that we have an obligation and imperative to provide answers to families whose loved ones made the supreme sacrifice for our respective nations," he said.