Korean War POW Will Finally Be Buried in Arlington National Cemetery

First Lt. Herman Falk, a 1950 graduate of The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, went missing with 156 other soldiers from Company B, 38th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, on Feb. 12, 1951, during operations against the Chinese People's Volunteer Forces near Changboing-ni, Korea.

By Patricia Kime

After the war, U.S. troops held as prisoners of war reported that Falk died in captivity a few months after his capture, in either April or May, at Suan Bean Camp in North Korea.

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He will be buried with military honors at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on Thursday.

North Korea returned 208 boxes containing the mingled remains of at least 400 troops to the United States between 1990 and 1994. Falk's were among them, and were identified in August 2018 by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) using DNA analysis.

Falk's name is emblazoned on The Citadel War Memorial and is also on a plaque outside the school's chapel honoring graduates who died in combat. Originally from the Bronx, New York, Falk was born on Sept. 3, 1928. He was 22 when he died. He was the son of Herman Louis Falk and Martha Westheimer Falk of New Rochelle, New York, according to U.S. Census records.

According to the DPAA, 7,686 Americans remain unaccounted for from the Korean War. The agency continues to identify the missing and has released the identifications of 200 POWs confirmed through contemporary forensic analysis in the past year.

Last July, North Korea returned 55 boxes of remains to the United States.

-- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @patriciakime.