Individual Identification of Human Remains from the Korean War.

Shin, Kyoung Jin; Yang, Yun Seok; Choi, Jong Hoon; Kim, Chong Youl

Original article

Korean Journal of Legal Medicine 2001;25(2):31-37.
Published online October 31, 2001.

Individual Identification of Human Remains from the Korean War.

Kyoung Jin Shin, Yun Seok Yang, Jong Hoon Choi, Chong Youl Kim

Department of Forensic Medicine, College of Medicine, Yonsei University.

Abstract

During the exhumation of victims of Korean War, among the memorial activities of Korean War, we found a dead body in a tomb in Kyung-Ju city. With the testimony of natives we could find the family related with the body. Using bone and teeth of it we determined that it was male and about 20 years old or more and the result was unite with the insistence of the bereaved family. With the photography offered by the family and the skull we did the photographic superimposition and according to the result we could not exclude that it was the same person with him. We performed mitochondrial DNA(mtDNA) sequencing and it reveals that the dead body and the family have same maternal inherited mtDNA. Finally, We could identify the dead body. At present it is very difficult thing to collect much data of victims of Korean War because it passed over 50 years. But if we find the bereaved family of them we can identify them more accurate and more objective with the forensic identification method like sex determination, age estimation, superimposition and mtDNA sequencing and so on.

Key Words: Korean war, Sex determination, Age estimation, Superimposition, mtDNA