Pentagon Plans to Identify Korean War Unknown
PHOTO CAPTION: U.S. Army file photo — Old Guard sentinels salute at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery on Jan. 25, 2026. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency plans to seek permission to exhume the Korean War Unknown and attempt to identify the remains using modern DNA technology.
Nearly seven decades after an unidentified American killed in the Korean War was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery, the Pentagon's agency responsible for accounting for missing service members plans to seek permission to exhume the remains and attempt something once impossible:
Give the Unknown his identity back.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency intends to petition the Army to disinter the Korean War Unknown from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier complex at Arlington, DPAA Director Kelly McKeague and an agency spokesman told Stars and Stripes.
The reason is advances in DNA technology.
McKeague said during a Sept. 1 webinar that investigators now believe there is a high probability the remains can be identified. DPAA has family-reference DNA samples connected to about 94% of the roughly 7,400 Americans still missing from the Korean War.
The plan would not happen immediately.
DPAA spokesman Sean Everette said the agency first intends to complete the disinterment of remaining Korean War unknowns buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii. Fewer than 50 remained as of this month, and cemetery officials expect those exhumations to be completed by the end of November.
Only after that work is complete would DPAA move forward with its petition concerning Arlington.
The unidentified Korean War service member has rested there since May 30, 1958, when the Korean War Unknown and World War II Unknown were interred during ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery. President Dwight D. Eisenhower presented the Medal of Honor to each Unknown.
The Tomb complex contains separate resting places for unidentified Americans from World War I, World War II and Korea. A fourth crypt was created for the Vietnam War Unknown.
And what DPAA now wants to do with the Korean War Unknown has happened before.
The Vietnam War Unknown was interred at Arlington in 1984. Fourteen years later, mounting evidence and advances in DNA testing led the Defense Department to exhume those remains.
Testing identified the Unknown as Air Force 1st Lt. Michael J. Blassie, whose aircraft had been shot down over Vietnam in 1972. His family chose to have him reburied at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in Missouri.
The Vietnam crypt at Arlington has remained empty ever since. It now honors all missing American service members from the Vietnam War.
Now, improvements in genetic testing may make the same thing possible for the Korean War Unknown.
If investigators are successful, a service member who has represented America's unidentified Korean War dead for 68 years could finally be connected to a name, a family and a personal history.
At the same time, the possibility raises a question unimaginable when the Unknown was buried in 1958:
What happens to the idea of an “Unknown Soldier” when science can finally tell us who he was?
(Source: OAF Nation)
