A joint funeral ceremony for four South Korean soldiers of the Sangnoksu unit who died during a peacekeeping operation in East Timor was held at the National Cemetery in southern Seoul Monday.

Some 1,000 military personnel, family members and dignitaries including Prime Minister Goh Kun, Defense Minister Cho Young-kil and Gen. Leon J. LaPorte, commander of the United States Forces Korea (USFK), attended the funeral. Their bodies were later buried
at another National Cemetery in Daejeon at 4 p.m.

On March 6, the four soldiers of Korea's Sangnoksu (Evergreen) unit were swept away by a swollen river on the way to Oecussi, some 200 kilometers from Dili, the capital of East Timor.

South Korea dispatched the unit to East Timor as part of a multinational force in October 1999, two months after the former Indonesian territory opted for independence, and in February 2000, the unit came under the auspices of the United Nations peacekeeping forces.