When the Memorial Hall of the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea， the only museum in the country on Chinese volunteers’ participation in the Korean War （1950-53）， reopened in the border city of Dandong， Liaoning Province in northeast China， in September， it triggered widespread reminiscences， especially this year being the 70th anniversary of the war.
　　Beijing resident Sun Yuhong’s father and uncle took part in the war. Finally， her father came back but her uncle didn’t. She began trying to find out what happened to him in 1979， due to her grandparents’concern over their missing son. He was 20 when he went to the war as a member of the Chinese People’s Volunteers （CPV）.

　　In 2014， along with others who too were searching for relatives missing in the war， she formed a group to share informa- tion about the missing ones. The group members， who are from different parts of the country， share the list of names and images from their local cemeteries in an online chat group.
　　The team has evolved into the largest organization nationwide helping relatives looking for their CPV kin. So far， they have helped 1，780 families fi nd their relatives.
　　“It is a really hard task，” Sun told Beijing Review. “It was wartime and there was great chaos.” Also， many volunteers may not have recorded their full names. Over 90 percent of them were illiterate and couldn’t write their name.
　　A total of 2.9 million Chinese volunteers fought in the war. So far， 197，653 of them have been officially registered as martyrs by the Ministry of Veteran Affairs. Detailed information is available about the age， birthplace and exact date of death of the recorded fallen. “But there are still many other unknown heroes who sacrifi ced their lives in the war but the deaths were not recorded due to various reasons，” Sun said.“Their family members never stopped looking for them.”
　　Sun was lucky to have more information about her uncle. She found a veteran who was in the same corps with him and confirmed he was killed in 1953. Then someone from Shenyang， capital of Liaoning， shared a photo of the CPV martyrs’ cemetery and on the wall， where the names of those buried there were inscribed， she found her uncle’s name.

A farewell journey

　　In June 2018， she embarked on a trip to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea（DPRK） to “visit” the uncle she had never met. As she passed the China-DPRK border by train， taking the route her uncle had， she tried to picture the scene when he had passed the same border in 1951.
　　She was accompanied by four CPV veterans and two relatives of those who had died in the war. The purpose of the trip was to sweep the tombs of the men buried in the DPRK. Sun was not sure about the location of her uncle’s tomb but it was the closest she would be to him. When they reached their destination， she bowed in the direction of the battlefield where he was killed and cried for him.
　　Jin Jinhua， a 72-year-old from Hangzhou， Zhejiang Province in east China， made the same trip in August 2017 with his family. His father was killed in the war. A literate man， he had left a diary， a precious record of the war.
　　The death was confirmed right after the war and Jin learned he was buried in the DPRK. “It was my mother’s lifelong wish to visit my father’s tomb but it was not realized when she was alive，” he told Xinhua News Agency. Jin found a DPRK student studying at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou， east China， and the student eventually helped to find the location of the grave.
　　When they visited the tomb with fl owers and traditional last rites objects， Gu Duyan， a documentary maker， followed them for the entire trip to make a documentary. “The government allocates fund and arranges for people to go to the DPRK to maintain the cemeteries there every year，” Gu said. “The motherland has not forgotten them.”

Piecing identities together

　　In September 2019， a ceremony was held in a Shenyang cemetery to identify six CPV members by DNA technology， the fi rst time the technology was used. Following the identifi cation， a database was set up.
　　The work has been undertaken by a People’s Liberation Army team. It was a challenging task to extract a valid DNA sequence from the remains， which were either buried or exposed for a long time. Then the team had to find close relatives of the volunteers to match the DNA. Many of the volunteers had died at a very young age and had no children to help with the identification. The parents and siblings of few were still alive.
　　The researchers finally found a new DNA sequencing technique so that even distant relatives’ DNA can be used to fi nd a match. This technique has also been used to identify the volunteers’ remains repatriated from the Republic of Korea （ROK）. An agreement between China and the ROK in 2013 has resulted in 716 volunteers’ remains being returned to China.
　　“It is very necessary for more people， especially young people， to know more about this part of history and how hard our ancestors fought for peace，” Sun said.
　　The Memorial Hall of the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea is an effort to ensure that.
　　First opened in 1958， it was closed in 2014 for massive refurbishment and expansion. The renovated museum has an exhibition hall five times the size of the original， with the number of memorabilia increased from 700 to 1，600.