Two soldiers who were killed during the Korean War have been accounted for, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
Army Cpl. Carmen Carrillo was accounted for Feb. 3, 2023, and Army Master Sgt. Merritt L. Wynn on Aug. 26, 2022, according to separate releases from the the agnecy on March 1.
Wynn was a member of K Company, 3rd Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division in late 1950. He was reported missing in action on Nov. 26, 1951, after the Chinese People’s Volunteer Forces attacked his unit’s position east of Unsan, North Korea, according to the agency. Wynn was awarded the Silver Star Medal for his leadership and bravery on that day.
In 2018, after the summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, North Korea gave the U.S. 55 boxes believed to contain the remains of American service members killed during the Korean War. The remains were sent to the agency laboratory at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam for identification.
Investigators were able to identify Wynn’s remains from among those remains using dental, anthropological, and isotope analysis, as well as circumstantial evidence.
A rosette will be placed by Wynn’s name at the American Battle Monuments Commission’s Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. He will be buried in Centralia, Illinois, on a date that has not yet been set.
The agency did not indicate how it accounted for Carrillo, who was reported missing in action on May 17, 1951, after fighting the Chinese People’s Volunteer Forces in Gangwon Hongchun, Republic of Korea. He was a member of Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 38th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division.
Carrillo was never recorded as a prisoner of war. His remains were determined not to be recoverable in January 1956.
Agency investigators conduct excavations and collect evidence at loss sites in South Korea every year. Since 1982, the agency has helped identify the remains of more than 450 Americans killed in the Korean War and return them to their families for burial with full military honors.
