WASHINGTON — China has agreed to a long-standing U.S. request for access to sensitive military records that Pentagon officials believe might resolve the fate of thousands of U.S. servicemen missing from the Korean War and other Cold War-era conflicts, a Pentagon official said Monday.
The arrangement is scheduled to be announced Friday in Shanghai after a final set of talks to work out certain details, according to Larry Greer, spokesman for the Pentagon’s prisoner of war/missing personnel office.
The deal marks a modest step forward for U.S.-China military relations, which have been strained in recent years, in part by U.S. criticism of China’s military buildup. China has periodically cooperated with the Pentagon on searches for MIAs, but it has balked at repeated requests to open its military archives for documents of interest to the Pentagon.
China entered the Korean War on North Korea’s side in 1950. Chinese troops killed and captured thousands of American troops; the Chinese also managed many of the POW camps established in North Korea during the war.
More than 8,100 U.S. servicemen are still unaccounted for from the Korean War.
