Country also did not provide other information to help forensics experts determine identities, according to a US defense official

When North Korea handed over 55 boxes of bones that it said are remains of American war dead, it provided just a single military dog tag and no other information that could help US forensics experts determine their individual identities, according to a US defense official.

North Korea hands over remains of US soldiers killed in Korean war Read more

The official, who discussed previously undisclosed aspects of the remains issue on condition of anonymity, said it probably will take months if not years to fully determine individual identities from the remains, which have not yet been confirmed by US specialists to be those of American servicemen.

The official did not know details about the single dog tag, including the name on it – or whether it was even that of an American military member.

During the Korean war, combat troops of 16 other United Nations member countries fought alongside US service members on behalf of South Korea. Some of them, including Australia, Belgium, France and the Philippines, have yet to recover some of their war dead from North Korea.

The 55 boxes were handed over at Wonsan, North Korea last Friday and flown aboard a US military transport plane to Osan air base in South Korea, where US officials catalogued the contents.



After a repatriation ceremony at Osan on Wednesday, the remains will be flown to Hawaii where they will begin undergoing in-depth forensic analysis, in some cases using mitochondrial DNA profiles, at a defense department laboratory to attempt to establish individual identifications.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The 55 cases of remains returned by North Korea at Osan air base on 27 July. Photograph: Quince Lanford/AFP/Getty Images

The defense secretary, Jim Mattis, said last week that the return of the 55 boxes was a positive step but not a guarantee that the bones are American.

“We don’t know who’s in those boxes,” he said. He noted that some could turn out to be those of missing from other nations that fought in the Korean war. “They could go to Australia,” he said. “They have missing, France has missing, Americans have. There’s a whole lot of us. So, this is an international effort to bring closure for those families.”

Vice-President Mike Pence is scheduled to fly to Hawaii for a ceremony, which the military calls an “honorable carry ceremony”, marking the arrival of the remains on American soil at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam on Wednesday.



This will mark a breakthrough in a long-stalled US effort to obtain war remains from North Korea, but officials say it is unlikely to produce quick satisfaction for any of the families of the nearly 7,700 US servicemen who are still listed as missing and unaccounted for from the 1950-53 Korean war.

North Korea provided the 55 boxes in a delayed fulfillment of a commitment its leader, Kim Jong-un, made to Donald Trump at their Singapore summit on 12 June Although the point of the summit was for the president to press Kim on giving up his nuclear weapons, their joint statement after the meeting included a single line on an agreement to recover “POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified”.

'A wound that never heals': families wait for North Korea to return their war dead Read more

North Korea had told US officials more than once in recent years that it had about 200 sets of US war remains, although none was “already identified”.



It remains unclear whether the boxes provided on 27 July include all of the bones North Korea has accumulated over the years. In the past, the North has provided bones that in some cases were not human or that belonged to servicemen already identified from previously recovered remains.

The Pentagon estimates that of the approximately 7,700 US MIAs from the Korean war, about 5,300 are unaccounted for on North Korean soil. Many were buried in shallow graves near where they fell on the battlefield; some others died in North Korean or Chinese-run prisoner of war camps.