Washington (CNN) North Korea provided only a single dog tag to help identify the 55 cases of remains that were given to US officials on Friday, a US defense official told CNN.

Given the absence of any additional information to accompany the remains, the official said it "will take many months to a few years to identity" them based of previous experiences with the identification process.

"Other than a single dog tag, the Korean People's Army did not provide further information on where they recovered the remains or any other information," the official said.

"Based upon previous experiences with this type of turnover from the DPRK, most of the remains will take many months to a few years to identify," the official added using the official acronym for North Korea.

The presence of the single dog tag was first reported by the Associated Press.

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