AUGUST 8, 2025 – More than 400 family members of service members who never returned home from the Korean War or who were lost during the Cold War met today with representatives from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency in Arlington, Virginia.
The annual event provides families of missing personnel with updates on how DPAA is progressing on fulfilling the nation’s promise to provide the fullest possible accounting of their loved ones.
Nearly 7,500 Americans are still unaccounted for from the Korean War, with about 125 unaccounted for from missions conducted during the Cold War. Many of those families are looking for answers from the department, and the annual event allows that to happen.
“Part of this is obviously … us being able to connect and communicate with them, to provide them updates on their cases,” said Kelly McKeague, director of the DPAA, during a press briefing yesterday.
For many families, it’s likely that the remains of their missing loved ones who served during the Korean War are in North Korea. And for now, North Korea is not cooperating with the United States to repatriate remains in the same way as other nations.
“I think what they will come away with is consolation from the standpoint of being amongst their peers,” McKeague said. “Many of them come back, despite knowing that things haven’t changed, that North Korea isn’t amenable to access; they come away knowing that they’re not alone. And so, this is a family reunion for many of them, who come back repeatedly, year after year, simply to be amongst themselves and to reestablish friendships.”
As of 1973, more than 8,000 service members were missing from the Korean War. Since then, 753 have been accounted for, leaving nearly 7,500 still missing.
Around the world, the DPAA works with dozens of nations to locate the remains of unaccounted-for service members and to bring them home, McKeague said.
“The 46 countries we work in all cooperate, some being former enemies — Japan, Germany, Vietnam — and everybody looks at it as cooperation that is part of responsibility,” he said. “It’s part of strengthening people-to-people ties. But the North Koreans are the only country that doesn’t see it as other countries do.”
Even while tensions exist between the U.S. and China, the Chinese cooperate with the United States on the DPAA mission, McKeague said.
“We have a team in China that’s been operating there for four weeks; they are, ironically, looking at three Korean War air losses,” he added. “Despite the trade differences, the geopolitical differences between China and [the] United States, China looks at this as an opportunity to cooperate [and] further the bilateral relationship, as well as develop people-to-people ties.”
McKeague said the United States will continue to try to establish a dialogue with North Korea.
“The Trump administration is very open to establishing communications with North Korea,” he said. “It’s something that could serve to build goodwill. It could serve to bring North Korea out of the dark and into the light of the world, to see that they are cooperating on a humanitarian mission.”
New Tool
This year, the DPAA has added a new tool to its kit to help better identify the remains of service members. The single-nucleotide polymorphism assay, also called the SNP assay, has been in use since January 2024.
The tool is used to evaluate DNA to determine ancestry.
“In 2017, we started a long process of developing our own single-nucleotide polymorphism assay, or SNP assay,” said Tim McMahon, director of Defense Department DNA Operations for the Armed Forces Medical Examiner Service. “It took us about nine years to develop the software and the method to be able to go after about 95,000 SNPs that talk about identity and ancestry. So, we specifically target those.”
The new process enables DPAA to significantly increase the likelihood of matching remains to a pool of DNA samples from family members, thereby aiding in individual identification.
For many of the families with loved ones who are still missing from the Korean War, McKeague said, there is frustration. However, the DPAA is still working to provide them with the answers they need.
“Here we are still decades later, searching, finding, recovering, identifying, and, more importantly, returning families answers that they’ve long sought,” McKeague said. “It may not be as rosy of an outlook given the fact that 5,300 families are still waiting for us to restore access [and] cooperation with North Korea, it’s still very hopeful.”
The DPAA laboratory, he said, recently identified the remains of the 750th Korean War service member since we started working on losses from that conflict.
McKeague said, “750 families now have answers. That’s something that we’re very proud of. Secretary [Pete] Hegseth … announced the 100th U.S. service member to be identified from the 55 boxes that North Korea turned over in 2018. That’s historic.”
In March, Army 1st Lt. William H. Hott, a native of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, was identified by DPAA. At the time, the secretary thanked DPAA for the work they do in bringing missing service members home to their families.
“Your unwavering dedication and passion to provide the fullest possible accounting for our missing personnel is more than a mission; it is our nation’s sacred duty,” Hegseth said, adding that every service member, DOD civilian and contractor who is missing from past wars deserves to be brought home and never forgotten.
By C. Todd Lopez, DOD News