The Repository Last Known Position

North Korea's 55 Boxes: How 100 Soldiers Got Names

October 12, 2026 · Runtime 12:48 · Watch on YouTube

On 27 July 2018 an American C-17 flew out of Wonsan, North Korea, with 55 boxes said to hold the remains of Americans missing since the Korean War. North Korea did not say whose. The laboratory would count 501 bones, from at least 250 people: about two bones per person, with one short paragraph of information per box and a single military ID tag. We follow the boxes from the runway at Osan to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency laboratory in Hawaii, through the agency's own briefings and case files.

Chapters

  1. 0:00 The C-17 from Wonsan
  2. 0:50 7,400 still missing
  3. 1:24 208 boxes, then nothing
  4. 2:16 Wonsan to Osan, 27 July 2018
  5. 3:02 One ID tag
  6. 3:51 Pearl Harbor-Hickam
  7. 4:22 Not one box, one man
  8. 5:52 About 80 were not American
  9. 6:31 The count, and the evidence
  10. 7:18 The chest X-ray and the collarbone
  11. 8:17 The first two names
  12. 9:55 East of Chosin
  13. 10:26 The hundredth
  14. 11:13 The account
  15. 11:34 North Korea goes quiet
  16. 12:26 Next: Heaven Can Wait

Transcript

The C-17 from Wonsan 0:00

This camera is on the wing of an American fighter jet, over the coast of South Korea, on July 27th, 2018. The plane it is escorting has just come from North Korea.

The C-17 is carrying fifty-five boxes. North Korea said they held the remains of Americans missing since the Korean War. It did not say whose.

Inside, the laboratory would count five hundred and one bones, from at least two hundred and fifty people. That is about two bones for each person.

This episode follows those boxes from the runway to the laboratory, through the agency's own briefings and case files. And it asks one question. How do you give a man his name back from two bones, when the only label on his box is a paragraph written by the people who handed it over?

7,400 still missing 0:50

More than seven thousand four hundred Americans are still unaccounted for from the Korean War. The agency believes about five thousand three hundred of them are in North Korea.

Most were lost in the winter of 1950, after the war had pushed deep into the north. This is Army film of the withdrawal from the Chosin Reservoir, that December.

By Christmas, the troops in the northeast had left by sea, from the port of Hungnam, and the harbor was blown up behind them. Whoever had fallen further north stayed there.

208 boxes, then nothing 1:24

The armistice of 1953 left those battlefields inside North Korea, and closed to American searchers. There were openings. Between 1990 and 1994, North Korea turned over two hundred and eight boxes. From 1996 to 2005, joint teams dug inside the country. Then that stopped too.

Those first two hundred and eight boxes were a warning. A Pentagon official said later that DNA sampling found about four hundred people in them. About two hundred were Americans.

In June 2018, at a summit in Singapore, the two governments signed a joint statement. Its fourth point committed both sides to recovering the remains of prisoners of war and the missing. Six weeks later, the fighters at Osan took off to meet a cargo plane.

Wonsan to Osan, 27 July 2018 2:16

The C-17 had landed that morning at Wonsan, on North Korea's east coast. On the ground, American specialists looked over the boxes before they were loaded aboard.

From Wonsan, it flew south to Osan Air Base, near Seoul. The date was the sixty-fifth anniversary of the armistice.

At Osan, the boxes were laid out under the blue flag of the United Nations Command, the command that had fought the war, and that still oversees the armistice.

The commander of United Nations Command, General Vincent Brooks, called it a successful mission, after extensive coordination. Now, he said, we will prepare to honor our fallen, before they continue on their journey home.

One ID tag 3:02

Only one thing in the boxes carried a name. The laboratory's director said the only identification media he saw was a single military ID tag.

It belonged to Master Sergeant Charles McDaniel, an Army medic from Indiana, missing since November 1950. That August, the agency gave the tag to his two sons.

But a tag is not a man. The agency said publicly that nothing linked that tag to any of the remains in the fifty-five boxes, and that it would make no connection until several lines of evidence agreed.

Even the Secretary of Defense would not guess. We don't know who's in those boxes, Jim Mattis told reporters. The remains could belong to soldiers of other nations that fought alongside the Americans.

Pearl Harbor-Hickam 3:51

On August 1st, they were flown on to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, in Hawaii, in fifty-five aluminum transfer cases under American flags.

Vice President Mike Pence, the son of a Korean War veteran, received them. Honor guards carried each case off the planes and into a hangar, bound for the agency's laboratory on the same base.

As the son of a Korean War combat veteran, Pence said, it was deeply humbling to be part of this historic moment.

Not one box, one man 4:22

The first inspection set the tone. The remains were in moderate to poor condition. None of them were the bones of animals. Everything the director saw, he said, was consistent with remains from the Korean War, and with good candidates to be missing Americans.

And the laboratory's director warned against the obvious assumption. You should not assume, he said, that one box is one person. He would not promise an easy identification in a week, or that they would all be done in five years.

He said nothing about the boxes had surprised him, apart from the care the North Koreans had taken in packing them. How long the bones had been stored before that, there was no way to tell.

Each box came with a short paragraph from the North Korean side. Twenty boxes were said to come from around Unsan, in the northwest. Thirty-five came from the east side of the Chosin Reservoir, many of them, the director said, from a village called Sinhung-ri.

Two battles of November and December 1950. At Chosin, the director noted, the Marines were on the west side of the reservoir, and the Army was on the east. Men from the east side would turn out to be in these boxes.

The agency's word for what was inside is commingled. The boxes had the same problem as the earlier turnovers from North Korea: several people in one box, and no way to assume that any box was one man.

About 80 were not American 5:52

Then came the finding that nobody had announced on the runway. By 2019, the laboratory estimated that about one hundred and seventy of the people in the boxes were Americans. About eighty were likely not. On the first day, the director had warned that some bones were so badly preserved he could not call them American to the exclusion of anyone else.

The Korean War was fought by a coalition, and by South Korea above all. In June 2020, the agency handed back the remains of one hundred and forty-seven South Korean soldiers, including remains North Korea had turned over in 2018.

The count, and the evidence 6:31

For the rest, the work was sampling. By October 2018, the laboratory had cut its DNA samples and sent them to the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, the military's DNA laboratory.

Even the number of bones moved as the work went on. In August 2018, the laboratory inventoried about seven hundred skeletal elements. By October, it had sampled five hundred and five. The Pentagon's figure today is five hundred and one bones.

A name needs several independent lines of evidence. DNA, through the mother's line, the father's line, and close family. Teeth, against dental charts. The shape of the bones themselves. And for Korea, one more: the chest X-ray.

The chest X-ray and the collarbone 7:18

The director said the agency has chest radiographs on file for about three quarters of its Korean War missing, and computer tools to search them, whenever the chest bones survive.

The comparison is the collarbone. The outline of the clavicle is traced on the old film, and a program compares its shape against the bone in the laboratory.

And the families had kept their side of the record. For the Korean War, ninety-two percent of the missing have a family DNA reference on file, about eight thousand families in all.

For Charles McDaniel, the reference came from his sons. A laboratory scientist rubbed two swabs inside the mouth of the younger one, Larry. That is how a family keeps its side of the record.

There was even a test for where a person grew up. In January 2019, a pilot study ran ninety-nine samples for stable isotopes, the chemistry that can help tell an American from someone raised elsewhere.

The first two names 8:17

The first two names came in September 2018, six weeks after the boxes reached Hawaii. One of them was Charles McDaniel, accounted for on September 12th.

The two men were in box fourteen and box sixteen. The first matches came from part of a skull and a collarbone. Then each was confirmed three ways: a DNA sample, matching chest X-rays, and dental records.

His release lists mitochondrial DNA, dental and anthropological analysis, a chest radiograph comparison, and only then the tag, as one piece of material evidence among several.

McDaniel had been a medic with the 8th Cavalry Regiment, lost near the village of Unsan on November 2nd, 1950. The Army had declared him dead as of December 31st, 1953. He was buried in Indiana in October 2018.

The other was Private First Class William Jones, nineteen, of Whitakers, North Carolina, missing near Pakchon on November 26th, 1950. Three kinds of DNA, his teeth, and a chest X-ray. Like McDaniel, he had been declared dead as of the last day of 1953.

After that, the pace was the pace of DNA. Seven names by June 2019. Ninety-three by September 2024.

The boxes were not the agency's only Korean War case. That November, it began digging up the Korean War unknowns buried at the Punchbowl, in Honolulu, and sending them to the same laboratory.

East of Chosin 9:55

Many came from the east side of the reservoir. Sergeant Jesse Hill, twenty, of Highland Park, Michigan, 32nd Infantry Regiment, missing near Chosin on December 2nd, 1950, was accounted for in May 2020, by mitochondrial DNA.

Sergeant Charles Garrigus, twenty-four, of Terre Haute, Indiana, was in the same battalion, missing on December 1st. He was accounted for in August 2022, with three kinds of DNA.

The hundredth 10:26

In March 2025, the Secretary of Defense announced the hundredth. First Lieutenant William Hott, twenty-nine, of the same regiment, lost on December 1st, 1950, on the east side of the Chosin Reservoir. His release says he was killed during a withdrawal.

The laboratory's director called the DNA method behind it new and revolutionary. Hott's release lists mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA, and a third kind that had not appeared in the first releases: nuclear single nucleotide polymorphisms.

Notice what is missing from that release. No teeth, and no chest X-ray. The hundredth name rested on DNA, the anthropology of the bones, and the circumstances of his loss.

The account 11:13

So here is the account. Fifty-five boxes. About two hundred and fifty people. About one hundred and seventy of them Americans. One hundred named by March 2025.

The rest of the Americans are still in the laboratory in Hawaii, waiting for a family reference, a better sample, or a better test.

North Korea goes quiet 11:34

And the source has gone quiet. In 2019, after a failed summit, the United States paused its effort to recover remains in North Korea, citing a lack of cooperation. Since the fifty-five boxes, North Korea has not engaged in recovery talks.

In September 2026, the agency's director said it had offered to go back. We've offered that to the White House, he said. We are ready. About five thousand three hundred Americans are still believed to be in North Korea.

For almost seventy years, the last known position of these men was a battlefield the record could not reach. In 2018 it became a box with a paragraph of text. What turned two bones into a name was everything else: a tooth, an old chest X-ray, and a relative who gave a sample.

Next: Heaven Can Wait 12:26

Next, a bomber in the sea. On March 11th, 1944, the B-24 Heaven Can Wait went down in flames in Hansa Bay, off New Guinea, and in 1950 her crew was declared non-recoverable. In 2017, a sonar found her. That is the next episode.

Description and sources

The one thing in the boxes that carried a name, the ID tag of Master Sergeant Charles McDaniel, proved nothing on its own: the agency said it would link no tag to any bone until several lines of evidence agreed. Names came from the sum of independent evidence: DNA from families (92 percent of the Korean War missing have a reference on file), teeth, anthropology, and chest X-rays compared through the shape of the collarbone. About 80 of the roughly 250 people in the boxes were likely not American; South Korean soldiers among them were handed back to Seoul in 2020. The first two names came in September 2018; the hundredth, 1st Lt. William Hott, lost east of the Chosin Reservoir, in March 2025. Since the 55 boxes, North Korea has not engaged in recovery talks.

PRIMARY SOURCES

Last Known Position reads a missing-in-action case through the record that closed it: the loss report, the excavation and the laboratory.

About the material. Film: U.S. Army Signal Corps motion pictures of the withdrawal from the Chosin Reservoir and the evacuation of Hungnam, December 1950, National Archives Record Group 111 (catalog 22344, 22397), public domain. Video: Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, DoD News, Air Force, Army and Navy units, released through DVIDS, public domain. No human remains are shown. Every diagram is drawn in code from the sources listed. Nothing in this video is AI-generated imagery.

The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense visual information does not imply or constitute endorsement. This channel is independent and not affiliated with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, the U.S. Army or the United Nations Command.

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