The remains of Min and Kim will be buried at a national cemetery in Daejeon, 160 kilometers south of Seoul, and another cemetery in southern Seoul, respectively, on Friday, ministry officials said.

Min was jailed for three years after being arrested in October 1942 for staging an independence campaign in Osaka. He died in May this year. In 1995, the South Korean government awarded him an Order of Merit for National Foundation.

Kim served a two-year prison term after being captured for his resistance against Japan in the northeastern Chinese city of Yanji in the late 1920s. Kim died in the city in 1970. He received a government accolade for national foundation in 2017.

The ministry has carried out the project to repatriate the remains of former independence fighters since 1975. Before that year, civilians had led the repatriation work. The remains of 136 independence fighters have so far returned to Korea after their burials abroad. (Yonhap)