Korean War · Documented, with clearly marked unverified reports
Editor’s note: Sections of this report date from 2012 and describe the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO), which was merged into the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency in 2015.
Status: This report covers the Korean War POW/MIA issue. It combines declassified U.S. government documents, on-the-record statements by U.S. and Chinese officials, press reporting, and firsthand accounts from defectors and former prisoners. Where a claim rests on a single, uncorroborated source — a defector account, a secondhand report — that is stated plainly. Nothing here identifies a specific missing serviceman as a confirmed survivor beyond what the cited documents themselves state.
The remains of many Americans who died on the battlefield or in communist prison camps between 1950 and 1953 rest in North Korea; their recovery and identification is a high priority, but this report focuses on those who were last known or suspected to be alive in enemy hands and never returned.
Summary
- During the war, U.S. intelligence confirmed compelling evidence that American prisoners were secretly held outside North Korea in China, and reported strong indications that some were also shipped to the Soviet Union. Most of this information was kept classified for decades — some still is.
- About 8,100 Americans were listed as missing when the war ended in 1953; about 7,353 remain unaccounted for (DPAA, as of Sept. 18, 2026). Most were likely killed in battle or died in prison camps, with their remains left in enemy-held territory. However, many Americans last seen alive in communist hands, along with the entire populations of some enemy prison camps reported during the war in China, did not return. They were all declared dead.
- Public interest in the fate of these Americans occasionally flared during the 1950s, including when China released some Americans secretly imprisoned as war criminals. In 1954, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force asked for CIA covert action to recover “an unknown but apparently substantial number of U. S. military personnel captured in the course of the Korean War (who) are still being held prisoners by the Communist Forces. These individuals will not necessarily be retained in North Korea or Manchuria, but may be held elsewhere within the Soviet orbit.” In 1957, a “Sense of the Congress” resolution stated that an accounting and/or return of U.S. POW/MIAs from Korea should be “a primary objective of the foreign policy of the United States.” But interest faded as the government failed to develop effective policy options, time passed, and the Vietnam POW/MIA issue grew in importance.
- Decades later, questions about the fate of lost U.S. prisoners from Korea resurfaced, but the Pentagon responded by simply denying to Congress, the media and POW/MIA family members that there was any evidence Americans had been kept in enemy hands and/or shipped from North Korea to China and the Soviet Union — this despite numerous classified documents in government files stating the exact opposite.
- While additional resources were finally placed on the Korean POW/MIA issue starting in the 1990s, and improvements in U.S. relations with Russia, China and North Korea offered new avenues of investigation, the overwhelming U.S. government focus was placed on the recovery and identification of men known to have been killed in the war. While an important focus, this was also the point of least resistance, as North Korea (and, to a much lesser extent, China) has always conceded that American remains are on its territory, and has used this issue for negotiating purposes.
- The Pentagon consistently avoided any real focus on what happened to men known and/or strongly believed to have been alive in enemy hands — the very issue that had galvanized military leaders and the White House decades before. The one major exception was the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs (USRJC), established in 1992, which included investigation of reports that Americans had been sent from Korea to the Gulag. It developed substantial evidence but was, in effect, shut down by Moscow some years ago and has been effectively moribund since.
- In recent years more information about Americans held behind has been revealed — declassified U.S. documents, including sightings of American prisoners alive in North Korean, Chinese and Soviet prisons; statements by North Korean officials alluding to surviving American prisoners; sightings of alleged surviving Americans reported by defectors from North Korea; the recovery of allied South Korean POWs, also declared dead after the war, but who escaped decades later from North Korean camps; and two U.S. Army Cold War defectors to North Korea who surfaced alive having survived in that country for decades, suggesting the motive and ability of Pyongyang to retain Americans.
- The Chinese government finally reversed decades of denials to admit it had secretly taken a U.S. POW from North Korea to China — but it now claims Army Sgt. Richard Desautels died of “mental ill(ness)” and that his body has been lost, in the very place U.S. wartime intelligence reported a camp from which Americans did not return, and from where some were allegedly shipped to the Soviet Union. Beijing has not provided information on scores of other missing Americans in Desautels’s category. (Associated Press, “China Admits Taking, Burying U.S. POW,” June 19, 2008) This Chinese admission would have been international news, and a potential trigger for renewed fighting, had it been revealed when it allegedly occurred in 1953. However, the Pentagon never publicly announced the Chinese admission when it was received in 2003. It did not become public until 2008, and the Pentagon has since made no substantial effort to follow up on the implications of this seminal case.
- The Russian government has, in effect, shut down the U.S./Russian POW commission, with limited if any real high-level pushback from the United States. The Pentagon was able in 2008 to establish an agreement with Beijing to review certain POW files; in the years since, Chinese support has been limited, and it has failed to produce the most important records it is known to have kept.
- The U.S. government has failed to take aggressive follow-up action, not only on China’s Desautels revelation and the other new information discussed above, but also on multiple reports of alleged surviving American prisoners from the growing number of North Korean defectors.
- PIP has found no integrated, high-priority U.S. government program to determine what really happened to the men last reported alive in communist hands in 1953. Current and former government analysts are convinced that China and Russia are refusing to provide key evidence on the fate of these men, and that no real interchange is occurring with North Korea on the issue. The Pentagon’s overwhelming focus remains recovering the remains of men killed during the war.
Detail
The following account is a summary of political and bureaucratic considerations, based on substantial supporting documentation available upon request. It is not designed to be a summary of the evidence concerning the fates of missing American prisoners.
The Korean War (25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953) was fought between the United Nations, represented predominantly by the United States and the Republic of Korea (South Korea), and the communist side — the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the People’s Republic of China (communist China) — with substantial logistical, intelligence and air combat support from the Soviet Union, and support from other Soviet-bloc nations.
U.S. POWs: in North Korea, and reportedly moved out
Communist POW camps in North Korea were initially run by the North Koreans and then taken over in large part by the Chinese; the Soviets also remained involved with the POWs throughout the conflict, in overall charge of the system according to several intelligence reports. American officials tracked those captured by the communists via radio broadcasts made from POW camps, letters and petitions, intelligence reports, and eyewitness accounts from fellow troops who saw their colleagues captured.
Numerous U.S. intelligence reports — most kept classified for decades after the war — also indicated U.S. POWs were being moved from North Korea into camps in China, where Chinese and Soviet forces had safe havens, and that some were also being shipped to the Soviet Union. In 1952, according to documents released decades later, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and Chinese Premier and Foreign Minister Zhou Enlai discussed retaining 20 percent of the U.N. prisoners. Intelligence reports during and after the war stated that hundreds of Americans had been held in Chinese and Soviet camps from which no POW ever returned.
In June 2008, the Pentagon — which had previously denied the very existence of much of this wartime evidence — stated: “We have also been unable to verify definitively the reports we have received regarding possible transfers or the ultimate fate of any possible candidates for transfer to other countries such as the former Soviet Union.”
The POW issue extends the war
The final period of the Korean War was fought largely over the POW issue. Many Korean and Chinese prisoners captured by the U.S. had been forced to fight for the communists and did not want to be sent back, instead preferring to remain in South Korea or be sent to Taiwan. The communist side wanted them all returned, fearing they would be enlisted in anti-communist activities, and demanded an “all-for-all” exchange. The U.N. side insisted that prisoners should have the right to decide where they wanted to go, a position that ultimately prevailed.
However, when the war ended in an armistice (there is no peace treaty to this day) and the prisoners were exchanged, both sides claimed the other had withheld POWs. At least 21 Americans — those admitted publicly by the enemy — chose to remain in communist hands.
Many POWs from both sides not returned
Many U.S. officials — from senior commanders to intelligence analysts — believed U.S. prisoners had been held back for their technical skills, espionage purposes, or use as political bargaining chips. “We learned the Chinese and North Koreans…had refused to return all the prisoners they captured. Why the Reds refused to return all our captured personnel we could only guess. I think one reason was that they wanted to hold the prisoners as hostages for future bargaining with us,” said General Mark Clark, commander of U.N. forces.
Especially frustrating were the cases of Americans known by name to have been held by the communists but never returned. In September 1953, the U.N. demanded an accounting for 3,404 troops, including 944 Americans — a list later reduced by subsequent intelligence and graves registration work to 389 — believed to have been in communist hands but never returned. According to the U.N., these men: “(1) Spoke or were referred to in broadcasts by your radio stations. (2) Were listed by you as being captives. (3) Wrote letters from your camps. (4) Were seen in your prisons.” Despite pressure from the U.N., the communists refused to provide any information on most of these men.
The scant data provided was in most cases clearly bogus. In their March 1954 accounting, and again in 1956, the communists listed Sgt. Desautels (see below) as having “escaped.” They made the same claim about Capt. Harry Moreland, a double amputee when he was last seen in communist captivity. Then there were the many Americans who had simply disappeared. While intelligence analysts recognized that many Americans had died in POW camps and been killed on the battlefield but never recovered, there were no answers about the fate of men reported in confirmed prison camps in China from which no American ever returned.
In late 1954, the U.N. and communist sides conducted “Operation Glory,” returning the remains of many men left on either side of the dividing line. Further graves registration work continued in South Korea and at U.S. facilities. But large numbers of Americans, along with South Koreans and other allies, remained unaccounted for.
The U.S. government concludes many Americans were kept alive
In documents mostly kept classified for decades, U.S. officials concluded that many American prisoners remained alive in communist captivity. In March 1954, Air Force Chief of Staff General Nathan Twining dispatched a memo — kept secret until 2004 — to the director of the CIA, entitled “U. S. Prisoners of War Remaining in Communist Custody After Termination of Exchange of Prisoners Under Terms of Korean Armistice Agreement.” The General reported:
“An unknown but apparently substantial number of U. S. military personnel captured in the course of the Korean War are still being held prisoners by the Communist Forces. These individuals will not necessarily be retained in North Korea or Manchuria, but may be held elsewhere within the Soviet orbit. …While it is possible that the release of some or all of these prisoners of war may eventually be effected through diplomatic negotiations, the fact that to this day apparently large numbers of German and Japanese prisoners of war from World War II are still in custody must be accepted as a Communist pattern. Today, for the first time, U. S. personnel in any quantity are coming into contact with this pattern. It is a fundamental obligation of the U. S. Government to vigorously pursue every authorized means to recover its fighting men being held hostage by anyone under any circumstances whatsoever.”
The Air Force asked the CIA for “clandestine and covert action to locate, identify, and recover” those American prisoners.
The government gives up on recovering most of the missing
By 1955, the U.S. government, at least in private, had concluded that existing policy options would prove unable to force a full accounting. The Chinese had revealed that they had been secretly holding a small group of Korean War aviators as “war criminals.” They, and two CIA officers captured in China, were eventually released. But as for a full accounting, a then-classified Pentagon memo concluded: “The problem becomes almost a philosophical one. If we are ‘at war,’ cold, hot or otherwise, casualties and losses must be expected and perhaps we must learn to live with this sort of thing. If we are in for fifty years of peripheral ‘fire fights’ we may be forced to adopt a rather cynical attitude on this (the POWs) for the political reasons.”
Intelligence efforts wound down during the mid-and-late 1950s, and much of the information on missing Americans was sent to the vaults, where it remained classified into the 1990s and beyond.
However, for the public at least, Korean War POW/MIAs remained a major issue. In 1957, a “Sense of the Congress” resolution stated that an accounting and/or return of U.S. POW/MIAs from Korea should be “a primary objective of the foreign policy of the United States.” The issue gradually receded, especially as concern about U.S. prisoners in Southeast Asia moved to the fore.
Flagrant falsehoods from the Pentagon in the 1990s
From time to time the issue received renewed attention, often as part of increased action by the families of Americans missing from the Vietnam War. This project’s founder began reporting on the Korean POW issue in 1989 and co-authored a book including the subject in 1992. Other authors and activists who had long researched the POW issue also gained greater attention.
The reaction of the U.S. government was, in general, total denial. During a Congressional hearing in June 1990, the then-lead U.S. agency for POW/MIA issues, the Defense Intelligence Agency, was represented by deputy director Rear Admiral Ronald Marryott. He provided a written statement that “there are no intelligence indicators that U.S. personnel from the Korean conflict were not returned to U.S. control at the end of the war.” He went on to state that the Soviet Union and China had also been under intense U.S. intelligence scrutiny for many decades. “I believe this scrutiny would have likewise revealed at least a hint of American prisoners held in either country had they been taken there. Again, no such evidence has ever surfaced,” he stated.
He was in step with the Chinese government, which in 1992 stated: “The Chinese side settled the issue of American prisoners of the Korean War long ago…None of the POWs under Chinese control was transferred to a third country or to the Chinese territory.” Pentagon public affairs officers repeated this line to the media, even as contradictory documents began to be declassified — for example:
“We don’t have any evidence that anyone was transferred from Korea to the Soviet Union.”
— Pentagon spokeswoman Capt. Susan Strednansky, June 1992
“These reports [of U.S. POWs being transported from Korea to the Soviet Union] came in great volume through the earlier months of the war.”
— Classified Pentagon report, February 1953
The Vietnam POW issue generates new attention on Korea
Increased interest in the Vietnam POW/MIA issue, plus the collapse of the Soviet Union, began driving substantial interest in the overall POW issue. In 1991, the Minority Staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations issued a POW/MIA report highlighting the Korean War issues. Korea was also considered by the U.S. Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs from 1991 to 1993.
In the early 1990s, then-Senator Bob Smith pushed for answers and was told by the North Korean Vice Foreign Minister: “The Chinese manned the American POW camps in Korea and the Chinese guards took them across the border into China during and at the end of the war.” In 1993, Pentagon investigators concluded U.S. prisoners were shipped from North Korea to the Soviet Union. In 1996, a Pentagon analyst reported “there are too many live sighting reports…to dismiss that there are no American POWs in North Korea.” And in 1997, the Associated Press reported that a North Korean official had acknowledged “survivors of the war” in his country, but the Clinton Administration declined to follow up.
The escape of Republic of Korea (ROK) POWs — America’s brothers-in-arms during the Korean War — from the North in recent years has also raised the issue. As with the Americans, U.S. intelligence officials believed many ROK troops had been held back, yet they too were declared dead. But as security levels in North Korea have deteriorated in recent years, these men have started to escape and return to their homeland very much alive, and South Korea now estimates that as many as 500 may still be imprisoned in North Korea.
The U.S. government focuses only on remains
Despite all this, in recent years the Pentagon and State Department have downplayed the Korean POW/MIA issue, especially regarding Americans captured alive but never returned. Instead they have focused the issue on U.S. remains in North Korea, launching limited trips from 1996 to 2005 to recover remains — trips for which the North Koreans have reportedly received substantial payment.
Reports of Americans still alive in North Korea have been classified, “analyzed” for years, and eventually dismissed because they “could not be corroborated” or the witness’s story was inconsistent. These dead ends occur in many cases because there is no way for U.S. investigators to follow up effectively without North Korean cooperation. For example, North Korean escapees have told this project’s founder that they have the names of officials and prisoners with POW information, but as far as can be determined, the U.S. government cannot or will not follow up inside North Korea.
The George W. Bush administration also elected not to make POW/MIA accounting an issue in the Six-Party Talks, which led to concessions to North Korea. In contrast, Japan did focus its efforts on uncovering the truth about its citizens believed to have been abducted by North Korea for intelligence purposes. After years of stonewalling, starting in 2002 North Korea admitted it had indeed abducted Japanese citizens and eventually returned five of them. Japan continues to press for additional information.
Tragically, this has created a situation in which the U.S. government has made accounting for Japanese civilians a higher priority than resolving the fates of American servicemen. In 2008, President Bush announced he was dropping North Korea from “Trading with the Enemy” status and moving to remove Pyongyang from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. The President declared: “The other thing I want to assure our friends in Japan is that this process will not leave behind — leave them behind on the abduction issue. The United States takes the abduction issue very seriously. We expect the North Koreans to solve this issue in a positive way for the Japanese…And it is important for the Japanese people to know that the United States will not abandon our strong ally and friend when it comes to helping resolve that issue.” The President made no mention of the U.S. POW/MIAs.
2008: a breakthrough the U.S. government ignored
After years of pressure from POW/MIA family groups to demand help from China on key Korean War cases — especially those of men such as Sgt. Richard Desautels, who was known to be alive in Chinese hands but never returned — the government asked the question and received an unexpected answer. But even when the Chinese suddenly reversed decades of denials, DPMO, the Pentagon’s POW/MIA office, took no significant action.
In 2008, after this project’s founder saw documents that had been given to an elderly member of the Desautels family five years before, and recognized their significance, the Pentagon was forced to admit that in 2003 Beijing had dropped decades of stonewalling on this bellwether POW case. As the Associated Press reported:
“After decades of denials, the Chinese have acknowledged burying an American prisoner of war in China, telling the U.S. that a teenage soldier captured in the Korean War died a week after he ‘became mentally ill,’ according to documents provided to The Associated Press. China had long insisted that all POW questions were answered at the conclusion of the war in 1953 and that no Americans were moved to Chinese territory from North Korea. The little-known case of Army Sgt. Richard G. Desautels, of Shoreham, Vt., opens another chapter in this story and raises the possibility that new details concerning the fate of other POWs may eventually surface. Chinese authorities gave Pentagon officials intriguing new details about Desautels in a March 2003 meeting in Beijing, saying they had found ‘a complete record of 9-10 pages’ in classified archives.”
2012: the fate of lost Korean War prisoners remains on the back burner
Rather than vigorously following up on China’s admissions about Desautels — from demanding the file about him to asking about other Americans secretly removed from North Korea — DPMO has handled the issue as a routine, low-level remains case. Although China agreed to share POW records with DPMO in 2008, there is no evidence China has released the file it admitted having on Desautels. The overall results of the document releases have been disappointing at best. The Chinese prison system was known for its record-keeping, but the most critical documents have not been released, and it is unclear if DPMO is even pressing for them.
At last report, the Pentagon had obtained no substantial additional information regarding Desautels and those in his category in the nine years after the Chinese admission. A Pentagon document of that period indicated its plan is to ask China for permission to dig for Desautels’s body — as if he were an American killed in front of his comrades during the war and the Chinese are now being asked for access to the trench line.
In 2012 DPMO stated its policy as: “Resolution of the Live Prisoner Issue. Finding live Americans is the highest priority of our accounting process. DPMO, with the full support of the U.S. intelligence community, aggressively investigates all credible reports and sightings of alleged American survivors of the Korean War living in North Korea. Since 1995, more than 20,000 defectors from North Korea have been screened for information concerning Americans possibly living in the North. To date, this effort has produced no useful information concerning live Americans. Most reports of live Americans in North Korea pertain to six known U.S. defectors.”
It is the definition of “useful information” that matters most. This project’s observation of DPMO and its predecessor office over more than 20 years, and its review of specific cases involving defector and other information, suggest that DPMO will likely never consider information on U.S. POWs in Korea, China or Russia “useful” unless it is undeniable and/or so explosive and embarrassing that the government is forced to act by the threat of public exposure.
One example is the case of Oh Young Nam, a former North Korean secret police official. He says he repeatedly saw 20 to 30 elderly Caucasians and Black men in a highly secure area north of Pyongyang from 1982 to 1993. Mr. Oh says his comrades told him the men were American POWs. “I asked: ‘Who are those people?’ I was told that they were American POWs. I was surprised that there were still American POWs alive. They all seemed to have families and their wives were North Korean,” Mr. Oh stated.
This is Oh Young Nam’s own account, not a corroborated identification of any specific serviceman. In June 2008, DPMO claimed this was “second-hand information” — because the Caucasians and Black men did not personally tell him they were POWs — and said the sighting “could not be corroborated.” Mr. Oh continues to assert that he saw American POWs, provided a video statement with the help of the North Korea Freedom Coalition, and says he is willing to help follow up with other information he believes could corroborate his account.
In an additional case, this project’s founder witnessed a DPMO Korean expert actually avoiding a defector who claimed to have seen an American POW alive in recent years.
To be fair, the U.S. government has limited access to North Korea and receives little real cooperation from Pyongyang, Beijing and Moscow concerning “lost prisoners.” Based on the record above and additional, more sensitive information, this project’s founder is convinced that DPMO and other U.S. agencies, like many bureaucracies, actively avoid focusing on questions that could create problems they cannot solve. Sadly, the fate of Americans last known alive in communist hands at the end of the Korean War fits this category.
DPMO stated in 2012 that it expected to resume digging for remains in North Korea when security conditions allow.
Request for information
Please contact us if you can help with any of the following.
- Documentation on the Chinese file on Sgt. Richard Desautels and on other Americans in “Desautels’s category” — known alive in Chinese or Soviet custody but not returned (such as file references or transfer records).
- Corroboration of Oh Young Nam’s account of men he was told were American POWs held north of Pyongyang from 1982 to 1993 (such as from defectors or former residents of the area).
- Names, dates or documents on any American serviceman last known alive in communist hands after the Korean War (such as from defectors, family members or former service members).
Write to contact@powinvestigativeproject.org. We treat every approach in confidence.
On what is still withheld: POW records going back to 1951 remain classified, and the National Archives says it cannot count how many it holds. What each agency is withholding, and what the record showed at the time, is set out on Classified!