Elon Musk flashes a DOGE T-shirt to the media while walking on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Sunday. AP-Yonhap

Concerns are rising that services essential to identifying soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War could be jeopardized by the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) policy to reduce spending limits on Government Purchase Cards (GPCs).

Elon Musk's DOGE cut the credit limit on all GPCs to $1 in an effort to reduce spending. DOGE announced Wednesday that it had shut down 146,000 cards across 16 agencies within two weeks of launching the pilot program.

The Washington Post reported, Sunday, that the U.S. Army informed genealogists working as contractors that it could no longer pay for their services due to the freeze.

Their duties typically involve researching family trees to locate the closest surviving relatives of missing soldiers, most of whom were killed during World War II, the Korean War or the Vietnam War, and have been missing for decades. This information enables the military to collect DNA and identify remains that are discovered.

Army spokesperson Christopher Surridge told the Washington Post that the service requested an exception to policy in order to resume payments as the genealogy efforts are essential to repatriation efforts and accurately identifying the remains of U.S. soldiers.

Neither U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) nor the Korean Ministry of National Defense (MND) provided comments on whether DOGE's card freeze would hinder efforts to identify the remains of soldiers killed in the Korean War.

"We do not have information on what this is about in detail. It is the U.S. Department of Defense to decide on this matter. So we would not comment on this," a USFK spokesperson said.

Defense ministry spokesperson Jeon Ha-kyu said, "We are not in the position to comment on the U.S. Defense Department's change of policy." He added, "Regardless of their position, the MND Agency of KIA Recovery & Identification (MAKRI) will continue to conduct searches for human remains from the Korean War."

More than 1.7 million U.S. troops fought in the war against North Korean and Chinese forces, with more than 36,000 killed, according to data from the U.N. Command. There are still more than 7,400 Americans missing as a consequence of the Korean War, according to Defense Acquisition Program Administration.