Report: US to send caskets to North Korea to return war remains

 In this Friday, Sept. 2000, file photo, United Nations’ soldiers carries a coffin of a missing U.S. soldier’s remains upon arrival at Yokota airbase in Tokyo. The most tangible outcome of the summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un seems to be a commitment to recover the remains of U.S. military personnel missing in action and presumed dead from the Korean War. In a joint statement signed by the leaders Tuesday, the countries committed to the recovery of the remains and the immediate repatriation of those already identified. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi, File)

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean media reported that the U.S. military plans to send 215 caskets to North Korea through a border village on Saturday so that the North could begin the process of returning the remains of U.S. soldiers who have been missing since the 1950-53 Korean War.

Officials from the United States Forces Korea and South Korea’s Defense Ministry did not immediately return calls for comment.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency cited an unnamed source as saying that about 30 U.S. military vehicles carrying the caskets were expected to cross into the North on Saturday afternoon.

North Korea agreed to send home U.S. war remains during a June 12 meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump. The leaders agreed to work for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula without describing when and how it would occur.

Between 1996 and 2005, joint U.S.-North Korea military search teams conducted 33 recovery operations that collected 229 sets of American remains.

But efforts to recover and return the other remains have stalled for more than a decade because of the North’s nuclear weapons development and U.S. claims that the safety of recovery teams it sent during the administration of former President George W. Bush was not sufficiently guaranteed.  /muf