Dover Air Force Base DNA lab takes lead in identifying Korean War remains

A group of forensic scientists at Dover Air Force Base holds the key to identifying remains the North Koreans sent the United States recently.

North Korea handed over 55 boxes of remains on Aug. 1 as part of agreements reached during a June summit between its leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump. 

The remains – believed to be of U.S. servicemen killed in the Korean War – were taken to a lab in Hawaii run by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, which identifies missing servicemen and women from past conflicts.

An initial inspection could not determine how many individual remains were in the boxes or from which military branch they belonged.

The possibility exists that remains from one person could be in different boxes, said Dr. Timothy P. McMahon, director of Department of Defense DNA Operations for the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, the Dover-based office overseeing the identification.

"From the 55 boxes, there has actually been no identification made," McMahon said. "What they found were personal effects and there was a dog tag within that, so that dog tag gives us a potential indication that the servicemember’s remains might be in those boxes."

It will now be the job of some of the brightest young minds in the field of DNA science to determine the identities of the remains, many of which were unearthed from a village near the Chosin Reservoir, the site of a brutal battle in the fall of 1950 fought primarily by U.S. Army soldiers.

The job will be long and tedious for the 78 scientists, but it will hopefully bring long-sought closure to some families.

Identification could take months to years, McMahon said. Through the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency's clavicle studies (where clavicle bones are compared to x-rays on file), dental records and DNA identification, McMahon is hoping for good results.

He said his office has a 92 percent success rate with an average time of 55 days from extraction to issuing a report to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

"By having this multi-faceted approach, we expect that within the next couple of months the first identifications will come out," McMahon said. "Others may take longer depending on if we have to identify additional family references."

For MacMahon and the 151 scientists that work in the Dover laboratory, the project is "extremely" important. It is the first time since 2006 that remains have been handed over by the North Korean government.

Prior to that, McMahon said about 850 servicemembers from Operation Glory couldn't be identified. That was before DNA was first used to support the identification of a Vietnam serviceman using a family member's DNA.

The U.S. received over 4,000 sets of remains of which 850 could not be identified by American Graves Registry Services at Camp Kokura, Japan. They were embalmed and buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific located in Hawaii.

McMahon said the DNA science that has evolved over the years since then gives his office a mechanism to move forward with bringing closure to the families of missing servicemen. 

"We’ll never stop trying to bring their loved ones home," he said.

The laboratory in Dover is the only one in the United States for testing human remains for DNA. 

Samples from all of the bones returned by the North Korean government have been sent to the lab in Dover and will undergo extensive testing. 

To establish a relationship, a family reference database in which DNA samples have been and continue to be collected from as many of the families from the original 8,100 missing Korean War servicemen is used to cross-reference DNA.

About 7,700 U.S. soldiers are listed as missing from the 1950-53 Korean War, and 5,300 of the remains are believed to still be in North Korea. The war killed millions, including 36,000 American soldiers.

Once the Department of Defense DNA Operations office at Dover Air Force Base has a DNA match between a missing serviceman and a family member, a "Believe To Be" report will be sent to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, which has identification authority.

That agency then puts together a packet, including the DNA, and if there is sufficient evidence for identification, it will be issued, McMahon said. About 75 percent to 85 percent of all identifications require DNA support, he said.

At that point, it goes to the respective service casualty where a representative will reach out to the family and inform them that an identification was made. 

Starting four years ago, McMahon said the scientists in his office wanted to keep a visual accounting of the number of missing servicemembers that have been identified. Any time an identification is made, the name goes on a big board in a hallway just outside the labs.

The board has a map of the United States, and each month when a DNA-supported identification is made, a photo of the servicemember is displayed on the board and a pin is placed on their hometown.

This man's job: To honor Americans killed in past wars

"It brings closure to a lot of our young scientists working in the lab, saying, 'hey, I did this,'" McMahon said. 

Many times, the DNA scientists are asked to join the service casualties so they can explain DNA identification to the family members. McMahon said those are rewarding trips.

"You can see the gratitude in their eyes that their loved one was never forgotten by the country they served, and that everyone considers them heroes and that they are back on U.S. soil," he said. "You just can’t put it into words. It’s just amazing."

Reach Jerry Smith at jsmith17@delawareonline.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JerrySmithTNJ.

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