S. Korea repatriates remains of 88 Chinese soldiers killed in 1950-53 Korean War
The remains of 88 Chinese soldiers who died during the 1950-53 Korean War were repatriated on Friday in the first such ceremony since South Korea's President Yoon Suk-yeol took office in May.
The bodies were handed over in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang in a ceremony attended by Chinese veterans of the three-year Korean War.
Their remains were casketed on Thursday in a ceremony held in Incheon, west of the capital Seoul, attended by Vice Minister of Veterans Affairs Chang Zhengguo, officials with the Chinese embassy in South Korea, officials with the South Korean defense ministry as well as personnel responsible for the excavation and identification of the remains attended the ceremony, according to Xinhua.
This is the ninth time since the signing of the agreement in 2014 between the authorities of China and South Korea that the remains of the dead soldiers have been handed over to their own country.
To date, a total of 913 remains of slain Chinese soldiers have been returned to the authorities of the country.
Friday's repatriation of the remains of Chinese soldiers is also the first since the inauguration of South Korea's Yoon Suk-yeol, who has tried to maintain friendly relations with Beijing even as he seeks to deepen ties with its main security ally Washington.
"Our yearly handovers of the remains of Chinese troops are held on a humanitarian basis, but also symbolise friendly cooperation between South Korea and China," Lee Do-hoon, South Korea's second vice foreign minister, was quoted as saying at the event.
Lee added the two countries would pursue "diverse forms" of cooperation, as they mark 30 years since bilateral diplomatic relations were established.
The Korean War started on June 25, 1950, when Communist North Korean troops launched a surprise attack across the 38th parallel into South Korea.
US-led United Nations forces battled Chinese and Soviet-backed North Korea, in which three million soldiers and civilians were killed and five million became refugees.
There is no exact number of casualties in this war, but western sources mention a figure of around 400 thousand Chinese dead, while Chinese sources say that the number of casualties is around 180 thousand.
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