The government plans to take over the management of genetic samples from family members separated by the Korean War from a private company starting late this month, the Unification Ministry said Monday.
Their gene specimens including blood, saliva and hair have been stored and tested by a private company since 2014.
Employees work at the Administration Office of Separated Families set up at the South Korean Red Cross on Sept. 28, 2016. (Yonhap)
They will be moved to the state-run National Human Body Resources Bank to improve their management and protection of their personal information, the ministry said.
The biobank affiliated with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is located in the central city of Cheongju.
"The private company doesn't have a proper repository for gene specimens of separated families and it costs a lot to manage them," an official at the ministry said. "The storage of the gene specimens under the state-run repository will allow us to manage the precious personal information on separated families in a stable way.
The ministry will continue to commission a private institution to test their samples.
A total of 64,545 gene specimens from 21,515 families separated by the 1950-53 war have been collected from 2014-2016. The ministry has allocated a budget of 180 million won (about $158,000) to secure samples from 1,000 more separated families this year.
Established in April 2012, the National Human Body Resources Bank is the largest biobank in Asia. A biobank or biorepository stores human biological samples including tissues, cells and blood collected from human bodies, blood serum, chromosomes and DNA samples. (Yonhap)