Paper short abstract:

This paper will consider the many challenges faced by Forensic Anthropologists in the identification of war casualties, focusing on the Korean War. Scientific techniques past, present, and future will be discussed along with the importance of a collaborative approach to recovery and identification.

Paper long abstract:

Identifying casualties of war poses many challenges, more so when the identifications take place many years after the conflict in question, such as the Korean War (1950-1953). There are currently over 7,600 US military personnel unaccounted for following the Korean War and it is believed around 5,300 individuals were lost in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). Strained relations between the DPRK and the US, whose troops formed a large portion of the opposing United Nation forces, has restricted recovery operations.

Recovered remains come from several sources, each with their own set of identification challenges; from staged burial sites in the DPRK, to 208 boxes of remains repatriated in the 1990s containing an estimated 600 commingled individuals. The most recent repatriation of 55 boxes of remains in July 2018 are currently reported to contain 250 independent DNA profiles, of which a large number are of Asian origin and may require further analysis to determine if they belong to South Korean forces or any of the approximately 100 missing Asian American servicemembers.

This paper will consider the many issues faced by Forensic Anthropologists in the identification of US servicemembers unaccounted for following the Korean War. Past, present, and future methods of recovery and identification will be discussed, both in terms of advances in scientific knowledge, multi-agency collaboration, and the significance of transnational relations in casualty recovery. Many of the insights gained are transferrable across identification efforts, particularly when faced with large-scale commingled remains.