It was disclosed that the bulk of the art works which had been put up for sale at an auction market in Michigan of the U.S. on May 11 were from the Deogsu Palace.

Among the relics were more than 130 pieces including art works, furniture, ornaments and ceramics and most of them were already sold out.

They included copperplates, in particular, which were made by the Korean feudal government for issuing paper money, the first of its kind in the Korean history, late in the 19th century the historic value of which is estimated to be very great. There were four kinds of copperplates for the issue of paper money at that time. The recent findings in the U.S. are the two kinds of them believed to be missing.

It was reported that the relics put up at the auction market had even the explanation that those were taken by the U.S. forces from the Deogsu Palace in 1951 during the last June 25 Korean War.

Conveying this fact, KBS said that there is no correct information about on what a serious scale the U.S. troops' plunder of Korean cultural properties was perpetrated during the war. What merits a more serious attention is how many were looted at that time and how many among them have been retrieved and where those retrieved are kept, KBS added.