Flag-draped transfer cases containing the remains of two U.S. servicemen from the Korean War are flown in this C-17 to Hickam Air Force Base. Along the walls are members of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawai'i who helped recover the remains. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

The journey came courtesy of a military that does not give up trying to return its war dead, no matter how remote the location.

The POW/MIA team from Hawai'i made the 9 1/2-hour trip from Osan Air Base in South Korea on a C-17 cargo jet, with the twin flag-draped caskets strapped to the floor.

Three mortuary affairs specialists from South Korea and Okinawa, wearing Class A dress uniforms, accompanied the remains as a show of respect. One was Sgt. 1st Class James Elzie, previously with the POW/MIA command.

Sgt. 1st Class James Elzie was one of three Army mortuary affairs specialists who accompanied home from North Korea the remains recovered by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command. They wore Class A dress uniforms as a measure of respect. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

"I was with (the JPAC team) for three years before going to Okinawa. They are our fallen comrades, and we're with them. They didn't give up on us, so why should we give up on them, until they get home?"

A ceremony formally repatriating the two service members back to the United States will be held this week at Hickam Air Force Base, where the recovery unit is headquartered.

There, the process of identification will begin so the men's remains can be given to their families.

The POW/MIA command has conducted joint recovery operations with the North Koreans since 1996, usually around the Chosin Reservoir and in Unsan County. Five operations are planned through this fall. The returning team was the 34th recovery effort since 1996; the 35th team just went into North Korea.

The 28-member returning team made a rare crossing by foot out of the North through the demilitarized zone that divides the Koreas.

Previously, teams and remains were flown in and out of Pyongyang in the North via Beijing or Japan.

The team also got something more: a glimpse into the unpredictable, outwardly hostile Communist nation that has maintained a tense standoff with South Korea for 51 years.

Their reactions were mixed: amazed at the lack of modernization, resenting North Korean efforts to chisel extra money and equipment out of the team, sympathizing with a people kept in the dark about the outside world.

"It was something that I wanted to do. It was a great experience, but just a culture shock," said Spc. Kelly Yi, 22, an American-born linguist with the team whose parents are from South Korea.

"They're pretty much the same people, just divided by a border. But (North Korea's) way of thinking and living is completely different," the Los Angeles man said.

North Korea has major highways, but few cars on them.

The boilers of steam-driven trucks have to be stoked with firewood to build up a head of steam for an uphill climb, and in the agrarian country, it is people power, not horsepower, that facilitates plowing.

The two television channels in North Korea are propaganda-driven. Cartoons portray Americans as rats and North Korean soldiers as foxes.

A Korean-English dictionary in a hotel teaches usage for the word "mutilate" using this sentence: "Let's mutilate the U.S. imperialists."

The team of military members and civilians spent 30 days in North Korea looking for remains from the 1950-53 war.

More than 5,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines remain missing in the North, many of them from fierce battles with the Chinese.

As a linguist, Yi made small talk with Korean People's Army soldiers, who said they wanted reunification with the South, but blamed the United States for the need to remain militarized.

"They blame everything on the U.S.," Yi said.

North Korean maps don't show a boundary between the North and South, team members said.

Choong Nam Kim, an expert on U.S.-Korean relations at the East-West Center in Hawai'i, said North Korean leader Kim Jong Il does not want reunification, because it would cause his Stalinist regime to collapse.

Rather, Kim has pursued investment in, and payment to, the North to support the status quo, while attempting to drive a wedge between South Korea and the United States, Kim said.

Although the U.S. teams are guarded and assisted by Korean People's Army soldiers at dig sites, they are often driven around military installations circuitously, so they don't see them.

As a result, the trip to the Chosin Reservoir in the northeast became a four-day trek by sport utility vehicle from the capital, Pyongyang.

Air Force Capt. Chris Tarrant, a team leader now in North Korea with the 35th joint recovery operation, said on the way to South Korea that members of the Korean People's Army are not bad to deal with, and that they understand the teams are there only to recover fallen U.S. service members.

But they are shrewd negotiators, and will use that to their advantage to pick up everything from sunglasses to extra supplies, he said. Last year, the United States agreed to pay North Korea $2.1 million for the searches.

Last time the 30-year-old Florida man was in North Korea, there was a misunderstanding over where the team could look for remains.

"And they read me the riot act — that there's still no agreement between our two countries and we're still hostiles," Tarrant said.

He said he was surprised at how "not with the times" the North Korean people are.

"Their technology is very low. Nothing's changed since the 1950s."

One surprise is that a hotel in Pyongyang run by Chinese has a casino for Chinese and foreign tourists.

Army Staff Sgt. Joaquin Andujar, 28, was returning from North Korea for the fifth time since 2001. The mortuary affairs specialist from Queens, N.Y., who has been with the POW/MIA command for 3y´ years said outside Pyongyang, North Korea is an agricultural society.

"All they do is work in the fields," he said.

Children march in formation after school, shovels in hand, to farm corn, rice and potato fields.

Andujar, who with 12 other team members recovered remains buried near a stream in Unsan County, 60 miles north of Pyongyang, said he resented the North Koreans' strict control on his first trip to the country.

But he has come to understand that is how the people have been brought up.

North Koreans need permission to move about the country; guard checkpoints are everywhere; and there's little contact with the outside world.

"For us as Americans, we're so used to freedom of choice," Andujar said.

North Korea is a threat, "but at the same time, you have this ambivalence because they don't know any better," he said.

In small ways, the POW/MIA teams, the only U.S. Defense Department presence in North Korea, are ambassadors for a different way of life.

"I think they are slowly, I don't want to say embracing the Americans, but I think they are becoming a little more understanding, getting used to seeing our faces," Andujar said. "They understand now that we are no threat. We are just there to do our job."