China's Ambassador to South Korea Qiu Guohong attends a memorial service at Incheon airport in South Korea. (Photo/China Daily)
A funeral service will be held in Shenyang, Liaoning province, on Friday morning for 36 Chinese soldiers who died in the Korean War (1950-53), after their remains were returned from South Korea the previous day.
The service at the Korean War Martyrs' Cemetery will be attended by government officials, People's Liberation Army officers and representatives from veterans' families, according to local authorities.
The 36 soldiers were members of the Chinese People's Volunteer Army. Their remains were found in South Korea over the past year and were handed over to a Chinese delegation led by Dou Yupei, vice-minister of civil affairs, at a ceremony on Thursday morning at Incheon International Airport in South Korea.
At a brief memorial service at the airport, Chinese Ambassador to South Korea Qiu Guohong placed Chinese national flags on the caskets holding the remains, before they were flown home aboard a Chinese military transport plane.
Two J-11 fighter jets of the PLA Air Force escorted the plane when it entered Chinese airspace. After the transport aircraft landed at Shenyang Xiantao International Airport, the remains were received by PLA officers in ceremonial uniforms.
Shin Bong-sup, South Korea's consul-general in Shenyang, said on Thursday: "South Korea and China were once in a war fighting each other, but that was in the past. Returning the remains will help to heal the wounds of history between the two countries and strengthen friendship among the people."
Under an agreement between China and South Korea, officials from the two countries consult each other every year on handing over remains found in South Korea.
The cemetery in Shenyang, built in 1952, was expanded in 2014 to house the returned remains. A stone wall carved with the names of about 210,000 Chinese soldiers who died in the war was erected, and the cemetery now receives more than 150,000 visitors a year.
In 2014 and 2015, South Korea returned the remains of 505 Chinese soldiers.
In 2000, South Korea started to recover the remains of Chinese soldiers who died in the Korean War.
A special unit was established by the country's army in 2003 to handle recovery work.
According to South Korean media, most of the Chinese soldiers' remains discovered to date have been found in Gangwon-do and Gyeonggi-do provinces.
Peng Yining contributed to this story.
