South Korea’s President pays tribute to the war dead at a ceremony in Oahu

South Korean President Moon Jae-in paid his “highest respect” to 68 Korean and six American soldiers who “made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom and peace in the Republic of Korea about 70 years ago” and were returned to their home countries at the joint ceremony Wednesday Pearl Harbor-Hickam base.

In the first joint repatriation between the US and South Korea in Hawaii, the remains of South Korean soldiers from the Korean War 1950-53, owned by the Defense POW / MIA Accounting Agency, were ceremoniously taken aboard a 747 white Korean government in Hickam.

South Korea, meanwhile, handed over the remains of six suspected American soldiers to the accounting firm for identification.

Three cases with two fallen South Koreans and one American from the war symbolically represented the entire group and were covered with blue flags of the United Nations and then with flags of the homeland, reflecting the transfer of authority.

Moon said through a translator that it was “an absolute privilege to be the first Korean president” to attend such a return abroad.

“American and Korean heroes are finally returning to their families after waiting 70 years,” he said.

The visit comes with South Korea, which is now a thriving democracy that has close military and economic ties to the United States, but is also exposed to the attraction of a rapidly rising China that rules North Korea.

Foreign policy expert James Jay Carafano recently co-authored an opinion piece that reads, “Not all US foreign policy ends in debacle” on Afghanistan and noted that the US-South Korea alliance was an “historic success”.

The South Korean president laid a wreath at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Punchbowl on Wednesday morning and awarded medals posthumously to the families of two immigrants to Hawaii, the Yonhap news agency reported.

Kim No-di and Ann Jung-song had raised funds for independence fighters who opposed Japanese colonial rule in Korea.

The South Korean Defense Minister Suh Wook accompanied Moon to Punchbowl and was received by an honor guard at the headquarters of the US Indo-Pacific Command at Camp HM Smith.

Moon was in New York for the United Nations General Assembly before traveling to Oahu. He told those in attendance for the repatriation on Wednesday – including the commander of US Forces Korea – that “what our heroes wanted to see in the Korean peninsula was complete peace.”

“At the UN General Assembly, I proposed that the relevant parties gather and proclaim an end to the Korean War to create a new chapter of reconciliation and cooperation,” he said.

An armistice was signed in 1953, but technically a state of war still exists between South and North Korea.

Moon said that on June 25, 1950, “at the sound of gunfire signaling the start of war on the Korean peninsula”, the United Nations called for a collective security resolution and “arrived about 1.95 million sons and daughters from 22 countries around the world” . the Korean peninsula to defend peace in a distant land they barely knew. “

More than 7,500 Americans remain missing from the Korean War.

Moon noted that two of the South Koreans who were brought back were First Class Corporals who fought at the Changjin (Chosin) Reservoir as reinforcement forces for the 7th Division and 32nd Regiment of the US Army.

“Your noble sacrifice” helped 100,000 refugees maintain their freedom – including his own parents, Moon said.

Kim He’su, the great-granddaughter of one of the men and now the second lieutenant in the Army of the Republic of Korea, flew in for repatriation to personally carry his remains.

The Battle of Chosin Reservoir was a “two-week bloodbath” in the cold winter of 1950, in which 30,000 US, Korean and British troops faced 120,000 Chinese soldiers, the Marine Corps said.

The DPAA, which searches for, retrieves and identifies missing American war dead, has a large identification laboratory in Hickam.

The six suspected American soldiers were recovered by the South Korean Ministry of Defense, MAKRI.

The 68 remains that are returning to South Korea came to the auditing agency from North and South Korea between 1990 and 2018, the DPAA said. One resulted from a desintering at Punchbowl.

Rear Adm. Darius Banaji, assistant director of operations at the accounting department, said years of joint forensic reviews with MAKRI revealed that over 200 remains in the Hawaii laboratory were from South Korean soldiers.

Most were returned to South Korea in 2018 and last year, he said.

“So today’s ceremony, probably the last of this magnitude, means that the remaining 68 Republic of Korea soldiers are in the care of the United States,” Banaji said.

Admiral John Aquilino, head of US Indo-Pacific Command, told the audience gathered for the event in a hangar in Hickam: “The Korean War has brought our two nations side by side to fight for and uphold values defend those in the ideals of freedom. “

Moon then noted that the Republic of Korea-US relations “have turned into a comprehensive alliance sharing a whole range of values” across the political, economic, social and cultural spectrum and freedom and peace, democracy , Human rights and the rule of law.