It took him 66 years to return home.<br />Excavated from the DMZ in May,... the remains of a Korean War veteran who was killed during the bloody Arrowhead Hill battle have been repatriated.<br />Our Lee Kyung-eun tells us more about our fallen hero.<br />This photo shows South Korean Nam-gung Sun during his military service.<br />Having lost his parents at an early age, Nam-gung became a farmer to support his family along with his three siblings.<br />In 1952, two years after the Korean War broke out,... he joined the army to protect the country,… leaving two children at home.<br />He was 23 years old.<br />He fought in the infamous Arrowhead Hill battle in the border town of Cheorwon inside what is now the Demilitarized Zone.<br />On July 9th, 1953, just 18 days before the Armistice Agreement was signed,... he was killed by shrapnel from a bomb fired by Chinese forces.<br />For 66 years, his remains were left untouched inside the heavily-fortified DMZ before being excavated on May 30th.<br />In the meantime, his son Nam-gung Wangwoo, who was just 3 when his father left to join the war, had registered his DNA with the defense ministry in 2008, hoping it would lead to his father coming home one day.<br /><br />The ministry runs the Killed-In-Action Recovery and Identification Agency,...which has been using DNA samples to match recovered war remains since 2000.<br />So far, one-hundred-32 fallen heroes have been returned to their families thanks to the system.<br />Now 69 years-old, Nam-gung Sun's son has been reunited with his fallen father.<br />There will be a repatriation ceremony for him ahead of his burial at the National Cemetery.<br />If they haven't already, bereaved families can still register their DNA samples at nearby public health centers, military hospitals or the Killed-In-Action Recovery and Identification Agency.<br />Lee Kyung-eun, Arirang News.<br />
