SEOUL — Remains believed to be those of U.S. troops killed during the Korean War, recovered recently from North Korea, were honored with quiet martial pageantry Thursday in a parade ground ceremony at Yongsan Garrison.

A brief observance of America’s Memorial Day preceded the repatriation ceremony.

With the keening of a lone bagpipe wafting across the field, an honor guard bore two casketlike “transfer cases” across the gray gravel parade ground of Knight Field on Yongsan Main Post to two black hearses waiting at the field’s edge.

Ranged along the southern end of the field in blue dress uniforms were the 8th Army Band and several formations of the United Nations Command Honor Guard, including troops from the United States, South Korea and several other nations.

At the start of the ceremony, the remains had been positioned some yards from the reviewing stand, each case covered with a sky-blue United Nations flag.

Let “us not forget that it was these brave men, in front of us, fighting with others under the U.N. banner, that stood fast against a North Korean invasion… ” said the United Kingdom’s Brigadier John O’Hare of the UNC’s Military Armistice Commission.

“For them, it is time, finally, to return home to their families and comrades after resting where they fell so long ago …” O’Hare said. “They shall grow not old as we that remain grow old. Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we shall remember them.”

Once the cases were laid inside each hearse, a soldier gave a low-voiced command, and two others, moving with ceremonial deliberateness, stepped toward the rear doors and closed them.

The engine of the rightmost hearse rumbled quietly to life and the vehicle rolled slowly forward, gravel crunching softly under its tires. The second hearse pulled in behind it.

When the hearses and their military police escort vehicles had left the field and were making a slow, dignified progress along an outer driveway, the piper played “Going Home,” an African-American spiritual whose melody is the same as the largo movement of Dvorak’s New World Symphony.

The remains were driven to Osan Air Base, from where they were to be flown to Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii. There, forensic experts will work to identify the number of individuals recovered, their national origin, and, if possible, their identities.

They were the first remains to be returned from this year’s recovery operations carried out by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), which has entered its 10th consecutive year of recovery operations in North Korea. The Defense Department, however, suspended such operations on Wednesday, accusing North Korea of creating an unsafe environment for U.S. workers. Defense officials offered no more details on the suspension.

The remains honored Thursday were recovered from two areas where a number of U.S. units saw intense action in late 1950: the Chosin Reservoir and Unsan County, about 60 miles north of Pyongyang.

In brief Memorial Day remarks, Army Gen. Leon J. LaPorte, the top U.S. military commander in South Korea, said the day was one in which “millions of Americans remember those who died” defending their country, including those who have died since the start of the global war on terror.

“May their sacrifice continue to inspire and fill us with hope,” LaPorte said.