SEOUL, May 25: The remains of 12 South Korean soldiers killed in North Korea during the 1950-53 war were brought home on Friday — the first time the South’s war dead have been repatriated since fighting ended.

Twelve boxes containing remains, each of them wrapped in the national flag, arrived at a military airport south of Seoul from the United States, where experts had been identifying them.

President Lee Myung-Bak, Defence Minister Kim Kwan-Jin and General James Thurman, commander of US forces in Korea, were among those attending a guard of honour ceremony.

The remains were among 226 sets found in North Korea by a US team before Washington halted a joint recovery mission with Pyongyang in 2005.

The Hawaii-based US Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command and South Korean officials later confirmed that 12 were South Korean soldiers.

Two have been identified through DNA provided by their families and will buried at the Daejeon National Cemetery. Efforts will continue to identify the other 10.

The two identified soldiers had been listed as missing in action after one of the major battles of the war at the Chosin Reservoir in late 1950.—AFP