The United States will apparently send a delegation of military personnel to North Korea in March to resume search efforts for the remains of U.S. troops who went missing in action or were prisoners of war during the Korean War.

The Associated Press, Fox News and other media quoted a Defense Department official as saying Thursday that under the tentative plan, excavation work for soldier’s remains is expected to resume from April at the earliest. The recovery mission would come in line with an agreement the U.S. and the North reached during a meeting in Bangkok last October.

Major Carie Parker, a spokeswoman for the Defense Department's Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office, confirmed by e-mail Thursday that the North's military will start preparations in early March to assess conditions and prepare for operations ahead of the arrival of a U.S. advance team later that month.

The U.S. and the North halted discussions related to resuming the six-way nuclear talks and U.S. provision of food aid to the North in the wake of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s death last month, but both nations apparently decided to accelerate excavation efforts on humanitarian grounds.

The U.S. has recovered the remains of roughly two-hundred-20 soldiers over the course of 33 missions since 1996. However, search efforts were halted in 2005 over concerns for the safety of the excavation crews.