ex New mexico governor Bill Richardson
They are wearing purple ties
On Wednesday, the group toured the main library in Pyongyang, the Grand People's Study House, where locals still in their winter coats were crowded into drafty, unheated halls at computers with Intranet access to the library's archive of books, documents and newspapers.
Later, the delegation visited the multi-story Korea Computer Center, the hub of North Korea's software and computer product development, where a quote from Kim Jong Il reads: "Now is the era for science and technology. It is the era of computers."
Inside an atrium exhibition hall lined with widescreen displays showing off North Korea's computer products, the Google group fiddled around with the new Samjiyon tablet computer utilizing foreign-made hardware and North Korean software and linked to the Internet through a wifi router.
Home At Last
Corporal Clem Robert Boody
Sergeant First Class W.T. Akins
Sergeant John Hershel White
Private First Class Patrick R. Glennon
Corporal Charles Arce
Corporal Dick Eugene Osborne
I’ve waited nearly six years to learn the identities of these American soldiers who fought and died in the Korean War in 1950. Their families waited nearly 60 years for them to return home and be buried with honor and dignity.
In 2007, I traveled to North Korea with a delegation led by then-Gov. Bill Richardson and then-Veterans Secretary Anthony Principi. Our primary goal during that trip was to repatriate the remains of six American soldiers who were recovered by the North Korean military in 2006. The North Koreans had agreed to turn over the remains to Governor Richardson, who has a history of diplomatic negotiations with the rogue nation.
During our meeting with a delegation from the Korean People’s Army, General Ri Chan Bok, North Korea’s Commanding General at the Demilitarized Zone, explained that the remains were excavated in the Unsan region of North Korea. He said identifying information, including Army dog tags, were found with the remains. He read the names of three of the soldiers, along with their military ID numbers. I was astonished, as I wrote the names in my notebook. After chiding American leaders, General Ri said he was turning the remains over to Governor Richardson “out of sincerity and humanitarian spirit.”
We were asked by U.S. military officials not to release the names to the public, while the Defense Department starting the complicated process of attempting to identify the remains.