Remains of Four Silmido Operatives Secretly Buried to Be Sought Again

Ground-Breaking Ritual Held at Byeokje Municipal Cemetery in Goyang
Excavations Planned at Former Air Force Intelligence Unit Site and Incheon Family Park

The excavation of the remains of Silmido unit operatives, whose bodies have not been found for over half a century, has resumed.

On May 18, the Ministry of National Defense announced that it held a ground-breaking ceremony at Byeokje Municipal Cemetery in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, to wish for the recovery of the remains of four Silmido unit operatives who were executed and secretly buried following the Silmido incident. The ceremony took place at Section 5-2 of Byeokje Municipal Cemetery in Deogyang-gu, Goyang, which is presumed to be the burial site, and was attended by the bereaved families and officials from the Ministry of National Defense.

Starting with the excavation at Byeokje Municipal Cemetery (from May 18 to May 22), the Ministry plans to sequentially excavate three suspected burial sites within this year: the former site of the Air Force Intelligence Unit in Oryu-dong, Guro-gu, Seoul, and the area around the octagonal pavilion in Incheon Family Park, Bupyeong-gu, Incheon.

A scene from the movie Silmido

The Silmido unit was established in April 1968 by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Air Force, with the aim of infiltrating North Korea in response to the January 1968 infiltration of Seoul by North Korean armed commandos, including Kim Shin-jo. The Silmido unit consisted of 31 operatives, the same number as the North Korean commandos. Of these, seven died during training, and the remaining 24 were completely isolated on Silmido island for three years and four months, effectively living in confinement.

Suffering from harsh training and unfair treatment, the 24 remaining members killed some of their superiors and escaped the base in August 1971, heading toward Seoul. They made it as far as Daebang-dong, where they confronted and engaged in a firefight with the military and police, resulting in the deaths of 20 operatives. The four survivors were sentenced to death, and the Air Force carried out their executions the following year without notifying their families or handing over the bodies, instead secretly burying them. While the remains of the 20 operatives who died in the firefight were recovered from Byeokje Municipal Cemetery, the whereabouts of the four operatives who were executed and secretly buried remain unknown.

In 2006, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Past Affairs of the Ministry of National Defense recommended an official apology for human rights violations related to the Silmido incident and the excavation of remains. In October 2024, the Ministry of National Defense issued a formal apology in the name of the Minister at the ground-breaking ceremony for the excavation of the Silmido operatives' remains.

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