Last month, Communist North Korea turned over what it said were the remains of five U.S. servicemen killed in the Korean War. Now American officials say they're not sure whose remains they have. The remains were handed over to to a U.S. congressional delegation in an emotional Memorial Day ceremony in the truce village of Panmunjom in what was billed as the first return of U.S. Korean War dead since 1954. Only two of the five bodies were identified by name by the North Koreans, based on dogtags they said were found with them. They were U.S. Army 1st Lt. Jack J. Saunders, 27, of Ogden, Utah and Army Cpl. Arthur Leo Seaton, 20, of Chester, Pa. But the United Nations Command said today that the bodies, which were sent to the Army's Central Identification Laboratory in Honolulu for identification, were not those of Saunders and Seaton. ``While North Korea has indicated name association for two of the five remains, dental and physical characteristics of the remains were compared with the dental and physical records of the those two individuals, with negative results,'' the command said. The command said its findings were preliminary, but said it did not appear that the other remains returned were those of Saunders or Seaton either. ``Until the identification process is complete, we can't even be sure they were the remains of Americans,'' the command added. The soldiers' relatives have been told of the findings, the command said. The other three sets of remains were not identified by North Korea, but it said at the time of the return that they were believed to be those of another Army servicemen and two U.S. Air Force members. All five were believed to have been prisoners of war who died in Hwanghae Pukto province, south of North Korea's capital of Pyongyang. Saunders and Seaton had been listed as missing in February 1951, the Pentagon said. According to U.S. military, 8,172 U.S. soldiers remain unaccounted for from the war. The return of the remains was widely seen as a sign of healing and reconciliation after decades of emnity, an effort by North Korea to improve relations with the United States. The two countries do not have diplomatic ties. The United Nations Command says 33,629 U.S. soldiers were killed and 103,284 wounded in the war. More than 2 million Koreans were killed. The 16-nation command, led by an American general, was formed at the outbreak of the 1950-53 Korean War to help South Korea repel invaders from the North. There were large-scale returns of remains of U.S. war dead in 1953 and 1954. Then, after years of no returns, the North Koreans announced May 14 that they would turn over the remains of the five. Ho Jong, North Korean's deputy permanant representative at its U.N. mission, said at the time that the Communist government was prepared to discuss the return of more remains. He said the move was an ``eloquent illustration'' of North Korea's wilingness to ``settle pending issues with the U.S. government in a good way.'' North Korea acknowledged for the first time in January 1988 that it was still holding the remains of U.N. Command war dead.
