The South Korean Ministry of National Defense will hold a pair of hearings in the U.S. this week to secure testimonies from surviving Korean War veterans regarding the presumed whereabouts of the remains of their comrades killed during the war. 

The hearings arranged by the ministry’s agency for KIA(Killed in Action) Recovery and Identification will be held in New York on Wednesday and in Washington D.C. on Saturday. The testimonies collected during the events will be recorded on video and transcribed into documents.

Some 500 Korean War veterans are estimated to be residing in the eastern United States and around 130 of them are scheduled to attend the hearings. 

The South Korean agency will also meet with families of the Korean War dead to secure DNA samples that will be used to identify the remains to be excavated. 

The agency has secured around 200 testimonies about Korean War battles and the whereabouts of remains since first organizing related hearings in 2017.