The Ministry of Defence is appealing to the families of British personnel killed or missing in the Korean war to help with identification after the remains of troops were released 65 years after the end of the conflict.
The North Korean government, as a result of the summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un in June, handed over 55 bodies last week and the US is hoping Pyongyang will cooperate in a search for more.
British veterans welcomed the MoD move but anticipated, given the length of time that has elapsed, finding families could be problematic.
The US expectation is that, as the biggest contributor to the United Nations force, most of the bodies will be American. But some could be British or from one of the other allied countries.
The MoD is asking the families to provide DNA samples. These would be posted to the US, which is building a DNA database to help identify the thousands of American and allied troops still missing.
About 100,000 British troops served in the 1950-53 Korean war as part of a UN operation. More than 1,000 were killed; the bodies of an estimated 295 have still to be accounted for.
The MoD says any British personnel handed over would be given military funerals at the UN cemetery in Busan, South Korea. The MoD would cover the costs for immediate family members wanting to attend.
The treasurer of the British Korean War Veterans Association, Victor Swift, 84, from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, welcomed the move but said it could be problematic locating families. The vast majority of the parents would be dead and many of the troops were too young to have been married or have children.
Swift, who was deployed to Korea in 1953, said handing over the bodies for identification and burial would help bring closure. But he said: “I do not know where they will find the families. It will be difficult to find where they live. The parents would have passed away. They would not have been married. So they might not have had any family. They could have brothers and sisters, though.”
Swift, a member of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, was seconded to the Durham Light Infantry. He returned to South Korea this year to visit the cemetery at Busan, a visit partly paid for by the South Korean government.
North Korea handed over a casket in 2011 to the then British ambassador in South Korea purporting to be the remains of an RAF pilot. But the remains turned out to be animal bones. The British government blamed incompetence rather than a deliberate attempt to mislead.
Between 1990 and 2005, 229 sets of remains were returned to the US, but North Korean cooperation ended with the stand-off over its nuclear weapons programme.
American officials have said that identification of the 55 bodies handed over last week could take months or years. There was only one identification tag among the remains.
The MoD is asking families to call the Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre on 01452 854622/855258.
