California receives remains of US soldier from North Korea
The US State of California has received the remains of an American soldier who had gone missing in North Korea decades ago.
The US soldier, Army Cpl. Robert V. Witt, a 20-year-old Bellflower man, went missing in the Asian country nearly 65 years ago.
His remains were returned earlier this week to his sister Laverne Minnick, 82, according to US media reports.
Witt will be buried with full military honors at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier on Friday.
In 1953, during prisoner of war exchanges, repatriated US soldiers told officials that Witt had been captured during the battle and died from malnutrition. It is believed he died on Jan. 31, 1951.
Between 1990 and 1994, North Korea returned to the United States 208 boxes of unidentified human bones, no full skeletons, primarily fragments. US officials later realized the boxes contained remains from 600 Korean War veterans, the statement said.
North Korean documents included in the repatriation said that some of the bones were recovered from the area where Witt was believed to have died.
The two Koreas waged a bloody war between late June 1950 and nearly the end of July 1953, in which a US-led force fought for the South, while China, aided by the former Soviet Union, helped the North.
The war arose from the division of the Korean Peninsula at the end of World War II.
The battle saw nearly one million South Koreans and over 1.5 million North Koreans lose their lives before an armistice stopped the carnage in 1953.
The peninsula has been locked in a cycle of military tensions ever since the armistice. No definite peace deal has been signed until this day, meaning that Pyongyang and Seoul remain technically at war.
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