"The deal is expected to be publicly announced on Friday after final talks to work out details, the Pentagon said."

Declassified US Army records from the 1950s show that the US knew of and were tracking hundreds of American POWs in China during the Korean War.

Between 1996 and 2005, the US conducted DNA and forensics analysis to identify the remains of many of the missing soldiers excavated from various sites in North Korea.

But in May 2005 the Pentagon suspended that co-operative effort, saying the North Koreans had created an unsafe environment for US search teams.

...Al-Jazeera