It was a wet afternoon when Zhang Wei visited the graveyard in South Korea for the fifth time. On the hillside south of the border crossing at Panmunjom, on the 38th parallel, white marble tombstones commemorated fallen enemies, marking the final resting place of hundreds of Chinese and North Korean soldiers who died in the Korean War (1950-53).

Four months after the war on the Korea Peninsula broke out on June 25, 1950, the Chinese government dispatched troops, known as the People's Volunteer Army, to march across the Yalu River on the border between China and North Korea to fight alongside its neighboring country against the South and the US-led UN forces. Battles swept across the peninsula at a high cost of lives, and finally came to an end with armistice signed on July 27, 1953.

Graveyards for enemy soldiers are not uncommon worldwide, especially when political or geographical conditions make returning the dead impossible. The Allied cemetery at Gallipoli, with its inscription by Turkish leader Mustapha Ataturk, may be the most famous. Here in South Korea the dead are remembered in both Chinese and Korean, though many of their names are unknown. "Four bodies of Chinese soldiers," reads one tombstone.

Zhang, who does business in South Korea, is from Dandong, which borders the Yalu River, and had heard many stories about the war when young. He was surprised when he first learnt of the cemetery, and first visited it during a business trip in July 2012. After he blogged about the visit, other history buffs and families who had lost members in the war started to come to him for information. He felt obliged to pay more visits to offer homage to the war dead.

"There is always a sad family behind every fallen soldier," Zhang told the Global Times.

The quiet cemetery became widely known only after South Korean President Park Geun-hye suddenly offered to send back some remains.

"There are 360 remains of Chinese soldiers kept in Korea. The Korean government has so far kept them well. On this occasion and in an understanding that the bereaved families in China are earnestly waiting for their return, the Korean Government wants to repatriate them," Park said when meeting with Chinese Vice-Premier Liu Yandong during her state visit to China in late June.

Zhang said the exact number should be 367 sets of remains as he counted by himself and the information he, along with a dedicated team, gathered also confirmed the number. But "all of them are unidentified," Zhang said.

"South Korea has taken good care of the cemetery. But I think the Chinese side should have done better in coordinating with the South to at least help identify the dead," he said.

Body squabbles

The cemetery, which was built in June 1996, consists of two parts. The first is for North Korean soldiers only and the second for Chinese and North Korean dead. It houses more than 1,100 bodies. It is designed to face northward so that the soldiers could watch their home.

A museum located in Dandong in memory of the Korean War set the death toll of Chinese soldiers in the war at 183,108.

Most of the soldiers were just buried near where they fell, while officers of regimental level or higher were returned to China. By late 2012 the South had excavated 7,009 sets of remains, of which more than 300 were Chinese soldiers.

The unearthed remains used to be sent back to their country via the UN Command Military Armistice Commission (MAC), which was set up in July 1953 to supervise the Korean Armistice Agreement and has been working ever since.

However, in March 1991, when a South Korean officer was appointed as a senior delegate of the MAC, the North threw a snit and withdrew from the body, leaving the South Koreans to bury the remains themselves.

The cemetery used to be quite simple, with wooden markers and sprawling weeds, but NGOs suggested it could be a path to inter-Korean reconciliation, and so in the latter half of 2012, the South Korea's defense ministry spent 500 million won ($450,000) to renovate the place as the way it looks now.

Offer welcomed

A survey result released by Seoul in June showed that 36.5 percent of South Korean adults and 52.7 percent of middle school students don't know when the Korean War started.

Lee Chang-ryong, a 27-year-old South Korean graduate student, found the existence of the cemetery for those who were South Korea's enemies surprising.

"It seems they were treated with some respect even though they were enemies," he told the Global Times.

"But if there are some issues regarding who covers the cost (of moving the bodies), it might be difficult for the South Korean government to cover all the costs. It should be discussed with the Chinese counterparts," he added.

In response to Park's proposal, Vice-Premier Liu said she would report the message immediately to Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to the website of Cheong Wa Dae.

But as the remains' repatriation involves multiple departments from both countries and South Korea and China are not the only countries concerned, it may take some time to devise workable plan.

Still, analysts think highly of the proposal.

Lü Chao, director of the North and South Korea Research Center at the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times that Park's offer is an affirmative move and deserves appreciation from the Chinese side.

"The kind offer is a special gesture of friendship that will help form a closer relationship between China and South Korea," Lü said.

He was echoed by Cui Zhiying, director of the Korean Peninsula Research Center at the Shanghai-based Tongji University.

"This humane offer was brought up at a good time and shows improved mutual trust and better understanding of the Korean War by both sides," Cui said.

After the two countries normalized diplomatic relations in 1992, China has become the South's biggest trading partner. The bilateral trade stood at $215 billion in 2012.

"Now the Cold War is over and both China and South Korea anticipate better bilateral ties," Cui added.

"If the offer of South Korea could be handled appropriately, Chinese people will certainly have more cohesion and become inspired to love the country more as they see those who fought for the country are treated the way they deserve," Zhang commented.

Hopes of return

Following President Park's proposal, the Korea-China Cultural Association invited three Chinese veterans who had fought in the war to visit the cemetery on July 9 and arranged for them to meet with several South Korean veterans.

"I would never forget how it feels when I met those South Korean veterans, like enemies in the past now becoming our friends," Liang Denggao, one of the veterans, was quoted by the China News Service as saying.

Zhang is organizing about 15 people, most of them children of the war dead, to visit South Korea and pay their respects at the cemetery in late July. 

Among the group is Kang Ming from Xi'an, Shaanxi Province. He was only two years old when his father, a colonel, died in a fierce battle in 1953 and was then buried in Cheorwon county near the military demarcation line. For decades the 62-year-old has been trying hard to visit his father's grave and even take his remains back home.

He was impressed by Park saying "the bereaved families in China are earnestly waiting for their return."

"The proposal should have been brought forward by the Chinese side first," he said.

For years he has been learning every inch of land around his father's grave by using Google Maps since he could not get there in person. While the trip to South Korea will not enable him to visit his father's grave, Kang was determined to make the visit as he found on the map that from the hillside where the cemetery lies he could see his father's grave, which is not that far away, at a lower place in the North.

He holds faith that the remains of those soldiers will finally be returned to China, although it may take time. So when he learned the repatriation news, he felt a little unexpected but not surprised at all.

"I have confidence that the remains of those soldiers will eventually be returned to China. It's just a matter of time," he said.

Wang Gang and Park Gayoung contributed to this story