Operation Glory Chapter 2 Summary

Chapter 2: Operation Glory---Mission (Kind of) Accomplished: The chapter focuses on the reception of U.S. dead soldiers from North Korea (Operation Glory). It asserts that the failure of enforcing item 13(f) of the Korean War Armistice to recover remains in the hostile territory must be attributed to mutual distrust and tragic accidents, rather than merely North Koreans’ defiance of the agreement. Another preliminary finding is that the successful identification of many of the recovered remains should be credited to the military frequent outreach to soldiers’ families and clinics for their physical information, which probably changed contemporary people’s idea of identifying human remains. This chapter begins with the Korean War Armistice Agreement
and traces the initial recovery of American soldiers’ remains in South Korea. Then, I will move to the negotiation between the U.S. and North Korea on the arrangement of remains’ recovery. The climax of this chapter is the American side’s reluctant decision to make compromise to North Koreans’ proposal that each side should be responsible for the enemy remains in their own territory, which contradicted the Armistice Agreement. The later part of this chapter is to discuss the forensic technology adopted by the CIU, the daily operation of the forensic experts in the laboratory, and their communication with families for additional physical information, and the final report of identification. Such information will be reinforced by servicemen families’ reflection on the results of identification, which was seldom mentioned in official documents. After the discussion of the identification, I will narrate the internment of the unidentified remains in the “Punchbowl” cemetery and the Tomb of the Unknowns.
Chapter 3: We Do Not Remain Silent: The chapter discusses the dynamics between soldiers’ families and the authorities from 1954 to 1960. This part of my thesis aims to demonstrate that the rumors provoked by the POWs’ ordeals in the North Korean POW camps made the MIA families worried that their relatives may be enslaved in the Communist camp. Such feelings, combined with the heightened expectation of families on how to confirm the death of their loved ones, promoted soldiers’ families to launch various political campaigns. This chapter will firstly analyze the communications between ordinary soldiers’ families with the authorities and the former’s campaigns. Then I will narrate the limited negotiations between the U.S. or the UN and the DPRK/PRC. The narration will concentrate on three important events: Dag Hammarskjöld’s visit to Beijing in 1955, U.S. Ambassador to Czechoslovakia U. Alexis Johnson’s contact with PRC delegates in Geneva (1955 to 1957), and the MAC talks. As U. Alexis Johnson’s personal collection in Lyndon Johnson’s Library is mostly closed, it is uncertain to which details I could analyze this event with the sources in the National Archives. Other smaller diplomatic events like Eisenhower’s meet with Khrushchev in 1959 may be briefly covered.
Chapter 4 Silence in Korea, Progress in Vietnam: This chapter will describe the abeyance in the public interest in the POW/MIA affairs generally from 1960 to 1985.
During this time, the POW/MIA issue of the Vietnam War posed great challenges to contemporary forensic experts and was intensively politicized. The chapter will suggest that the Korean War and its POW/MIAs were almost forgotten in the U.S. policy-making and the American public. The Vietnam War revived the public attention to the Korean War POW/MIA myths and debates. The highly comingled, fragmented remains recovered from Indochina posed a serious challenge to the military, forcing it to revamp its forensic protocols. The chapter will firstly describe the absence of the POW/MIA issues in the diplomatic arena between the U.S. and North Korea. It will also show that U.S. even did not bother to locate remains in South Korea. Then, I will show the almost total absence of the trace of the Korean War POW/MIAs in the public attention (though some families still keep writing to the authorities). With secondary sources, I will present how the Vietnam War brought out the POW/MIA issues to an unprecedented degree. The climax of this chapter is a scandal in the CILHI in 1985, leading to an overhaul in its arsenal of
technology.
Chapter 5 Remains on the Bargain Table: This chapter will align the return of U.S. soldiers’ remains with the fluctuating contour of the U.S.-DPRK relationship. It demonstrates that the repatriation of remains is a mediator of the negotiations on the DPRK nuclear projects and terrorism. This chapter will begin with the renewed attention to the Korean War within the federal government and veteran organizations around 1985. At the same time, the U.S. tried more vigorously to persuade North Koreans to reopen the talks on the issue of remains. In parallel, the North Koreans found it an opportunity to make more demands on the U.S. --- UN membership, U.S. recognition, and the world concession to its nuclear projects. Their diplomatic battles resulted in the DPRK unilateral return of remains from 1990 to 1994 and later bilateral joint excavations from 1995 to 2006. It will end with the final breakdown of this joint operation in 2008. Besides foreign policies, I will trace the domestic attention to Korea and the war. It covers the debates behind the building of the Korean War Veteran Memorial in DC. Then, it will probe how the POW/MIA congressional hearings in the 1990s discussed the Korean War POW/MIA issues. Finally, local commemorations of the Korean War will also be analyzed.
Chapter 6 Code-Breaking the Remains: This chapter will focus on the adoption of modern forensic technology in the identification of the remains of the Korean War MIAs repatriated since the early 1990s. The DNA profiling technology may be the most crucial tool to identify the commingled remains sent back from North Korea, thus to account for the MIAs and judge whether the DPRK had paid its due to earn the U.S. political concession. I also suspect that the introduction of the DNA profiling again changed soldiers’ families understanding of death, from a list of biometric and dental data to a string of letters that encodes each individual, which could be obtained from a single piece of bone shard. The chapter will begin with the military’s decision to introduce DNA into its forensic laboratories and the technical challenges posed by the remains from North Korea. Then, it will narrate the process of remains identification and the public response to or digestion of such process and the improvement of technology. Finally, it seeks to trace the domestic pressure on the reinvestigation of the bodies kept in the “Punchbowl” cemetery and the public monitoring of the military’s forensic agencies.
Epilogue: Besides a reiteration of the core argument of my dissertation, it will briefly cover three topics. The first is the POW/MIA activists’ intervention in the reorganization of the military system accounting for MIAs after 2008. The second is a bold prediction of future repatriation of MIA remains from North Korea based on the recent development of the U.S.-DPRK relations. Finally, I may sketch how the Americans’ major enemy in Korea, the Chinese Army, took care of its dead and that the ROK is also using Chinese soldiers’ bodies to befriend the PRC.