400 Chinese soldiers’ remains return home after more than six decades
30 March 2014 4:45 AM IST
The remains of more than 400 Chinese soldiers killed fighting in the Korean War over six decades ago returned to their homeland on Friday for a final burial, state media reported.
A Chinese plane transporting the coffins of the 437 soldiers touched down in the northeastern city of Shenyang, the official Xinhua news agency said in a short dispatch. Earlier, the small coffins, draped in the Chinese flag, were carried by Chinese soldiers onto the aircraft at South Korea's Incheon airport for the flight to Shenyang, where China has a state cemetery for its war dead.
The return symbolises the turnaround in ties between Beijing and Seoul, once ideological enemies that only established diplomatic relations in 1992 as Cold War enmities gave way to booming trade and cooperation. China fought alongside the North in the 1950-53 conflict, its dramatic and crucial intervention coming after US-led forces pushed the Communist army almost as far as the Chinese border.
The Chinese intervention enabled Communist forces to drive Western troops back south, and ultimately the peninsula was divided at the 38th parallel.
A Chinese plane transporting the coffins of the 437 soldiers touched down in the northeastern city of Shenyang, the official Xinhua news agency said in a short dispatch. Earlier, the small coffins, draped in the Chinese flag, were carried by Chinese soldiers onto the aircraft at South Korea's Incheon airport for the flight to Shenyang, where China has a state cemetery for its war dead.
The return symbolises the turnaround in ties between Beijing and Seoul, once ideological enemies that only established diplomatic relations in 1992 as Cold War enmities gave way to booming trade and cooperation. China fought alongside the North in the 1950-53 conflict, its dramatic and crucial intervention coming after US-led forces pushed the Communist army almost as far as the Chinese border.
The Chinese intervention enabled Communist forces to drive Western troops back south, and ultimately the peninsula was divided at the 38th parallel.
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