President Trump said Friday that North Korea has started returning the remains of US troops who disappeared in the Korean War.
It's bringing new hope to a Collin County veteran who's been trying for years to bring home three local men missing in action.
From his uniform to hand-written letters to reel-to-reel tapes, R.D. Foster still has almost everything he brought home from Vietnam.
But after nearly 50 years, perhaps the biggest thing he's held onto is a lesson he learned right when he joined the Marines.
“One of the first things I learned in there was never give up,” Foster said.
The mantra guided his mission to build a Veterans Memorial in McKinney, and uncover the stories of three Korean War veterans engraved in it.
James Trosclair, of McKinney, was a pilot whose plane was hit by enemy fire during the war.
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Clarence Williams, a Marine from Plano, was captured by enemy combatants after a six-day battle.
Andrew Tishler, a soldier from McKinney and Celina, was taken prisoner too.
All have since been declared dead. But their bodies were never recovered.
“When you die, here’s how he lived, the obituary what happened,” Foster explained. “Well these guys, their obituary is, where are they? They're still over there somewhere in Korea.”
Foster says he's searched with no luck for more than a decade to find family members of all three men.
“We feel like we're the guys left, we're they're family,” he said.
Despite his unwavering commitment, Foster admits he never thought the day would come when any U.S. troops missing in North Korea would return home.
But now, he has hew hope.
“Never give up,” he said. “I just want to see this thing get done and bring these guys home.”
According to the U.S. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, 7,702 members of the military are unaccounted for from the Korean War.
Friday, President Trump said Kim Jong Un is giving back remains of "probably 7,500" soldiers.
