Rule 114. Return of the Remains and Personal Effects of the Dead.
The recent meeting between the current U.S. President and the current North Korean Chairman can mean new opportunities for forensic anthropologists.
It was mentioned that the U.S. and the DPRK will commit to recovering POW/MIA remains. It was also stated that there will be an immediate repatriation of those previously identified.
Image Source: International Criminal Court (ICC) logo. Public Domain. Wikipedia Commons.
Rule 114. Return of the Remains and Personal Effects of the Dead states:
“parties to the conflict must endeavor to facilitate the return of the remains of the deceased upon request of the party to which they belong or upon the request of their next of kin.”
The U.S. and North Korea have not had the best relationship since the war. A required agreement between the parties must be met for the remains to be returned. Between 1996 and 2005 the U.S. and North Korea did work jointly on recovering POW/MIA soldiers, out of which a little more than 100 were identified. The safety of American workers and questions regarding the high cost of almost $20 million halted the efforts. Also, some countries felt that North Korea was using this project as a way to obtain money from the U.S.
There about 5,300 bodies of American GIs who went missing in North Korea.
All of the bodies are in need of recovery and repatriation.
Affiliated with the Pentagon is the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA). This organization is liable for identifying American war dead and bringing them home to their families (anthropologist’s work here!) On the DPAA’s website you can find a list of the missing war dead, their possible locations, and a running number of accounted-for and unaccounted-for soldiers.
The DPAA employs anthropologists of various fields.
The archaeologists are responsible for the on-site field work in the foreign country (example: North Korea) they locate and then excavate the human remains.
The remains are then moved to DPAA’s extraordinary lab at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii (right out of undergrad I applied to work here as a forensic anthropologist! It was a longshot, as you can see I did not get hired! Maybe in the future, haha!)
Next, forensic anthropologists work on identifying the biological profiles of the remains, that means the sex, age, height, and ancestry.
Lastly, forensic dental specialists confirm the identification of soldiers by matching dental records (this is often used with victim identification). DNA analysts use the genetic information given by family members to later match that with the recovered soldiers DNA.
I hope we bring all of these soldiers home!
