Gwangju City and Chonnam National University Collect and Analyze Blood Samples of May 18 Missing Persons

Gwangju City Hall

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Park Seon-gang] Gwangju Metropolitan City announced on the 1st that, together with the Industry-Academic Cooperation Foundation of Chonnam National University (Forensic Medicine Research Laboratory, Medical School), it will begin blood collection and genetic analysis this month to find families of the missing persons from the May 18 Incident (hereafter ‘5·18 missing persons’).

For the 36 families of the 5·18 missing persons who applied for blood collection, blood will be drawn over four weeks from the 6th to the 31st, followed by genetic analysis.

The results of the genetic analysis will be compared with the genetic information of discovered remains and used as basic data to identify the families of the missing persons.

Following the discovery of unidentified remains in an unmarked communal grave within the old Gwangju Prison at the end of last year, Gwangju City immediately launched a large-scale campaign to find families of the 5·18 missing persons. Collaborating with cities, provinces, and related organizations nationwide, they encouraged participation from families of the missing persons across the country, resulting in a final count of 36 applicants as of May 29.

Yoon Mok-hyun, Director of the Democracy, Human Rights, and Peace Bureau of Gwangju City, stated, “The 5·18 missing persons are included among the six tasks that the 5·18 Truth Investigation Committee has begun investigating. This is a national and historical issue that must be resolved, and we will do our utmost to use advanced scientific technology to bring even one more person back to their family.”

Meanwhile, Gwangju City has conducted the ‘5·18 Missing Persons Family Search’ project five times from 2001 to 2018, and to date, has secured blood information for 334 individuals from 154 families, which is stored at the Department of Forensic Medicine at Chonnam National University.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.