An agreement between Australia and South Korea strengthening co-operation on the recovery of Korean War dead has given hope to the families of 43 Australians still listed as missing in action.
Defence Minister Linda Reynolds signed the memorandum of understanding with her South Korean counterpart, Jeong Kyeong-doo, in Sydney on Tuesday to kick-start the repatriation process.
Descendants of the Australian MIAs are pressing for the unidentified remains of at least 104 Commonwealth service personnel at the UN Memorial Cemetery in Busan, South Korea, to be DNA checked.
While they have been told that the evidence points to the remains being exclusively British, the families’ spokesman, Ian Saunders, said there was a chance some Australians had been interred there and the MOU opened the way for definitive testing. “Our hope is that this could be a catalyst to get us some answers,” he said. “We believe there is a good chance that there are at least two of our men in those unidentified graves.”
Senator Reynolds said the identification of the missing Australians remained a priority in the lead-up to the 70th anniversary of the war’s outbreak in 1950.
More than 17,000 Australians fought in the three-year conflict, of whom 346 died and 1200 were injured.
