http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/14/world/asia/north-korea-says-remains-of-us-soldiers-at-risk-of-disappearing.html 2014-10-13 11:24:09 North Korea Says Remains of U.S. Soldiers at Risk of Disappearing The remains of thousands of American soldiers killed in the Korean War are being moved from their burial sites because of construction work, state news media said. === SEOUL, South Korea — The remains of thousands of American soldiers killed in The troops’ remains were neglected and “carried away en masse due to construction projects of hydropower stations, land rezoning and other gigantic nature-remaking projects, flood damage, etc.,” a spokesman of the North Korean military said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. The 1950-53 Korean War, during which the United States fought for South Korea, ended not in a peace treaty but in a truce, leaving the peninsula technically at war. Still, the United States and North Korea conducted 33 joint search and recovery operations at some of the old battle sites in the reclusive North from 1996 to 2005, when Washington withdrew its personnel, citing security concerns amid rising tensions over the North’s From those operations, the United States recovered remains believed to belong to 229 American soldiers missing in action, 107 of them thus far accounted for through DNA tests. Separately, from 1990 to 1994, North Korea also unilaterally handed over 208 boxes of remains, some of them commingled, saying that they contained the remains of as many as 400 American soldiers. So far, 104 soldiers have been identified from the remains. Joint operations to recover the remains of the American soldiers killed and left behind in the North had provided North Korea with millions of dollars in badly needed cash; the Pentagon paid the North for providing workers. But more important, North Korea over the years has used the remains of an estimated 7,800 American service members still missing in the North to remind Washington that it needed to negotiate with Pyongyang. The North’s statement on Monday appeared to be aimed at pressuring the United States to open dialogues. It said the remains of missing soldiers “now look like no better than stones” as their burial sites gave way to land development. “The situation clearly proves” that Washington’s vow to bring its missing service members home was “nothing but a lie and hypocrisy,” the North Korean spokesman said, blaming the United States’ “hostile policy” for the suspension of recovery efforts. The Obama administration should not forget “the proverb saying that even a skeleton cries out of yearning for the homeland,” the spokesman added. North Korea and the United States agreed in 2011 to resume work to recover the remains, but that deal ended after North Korea escalated tensions by testing a long-range rocket and a nuclear device.