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Mounting calls in U.S. for putting N. Korea back on ‘state sponsors of terrorism’ list

Mounting calls in U.S. for putting N. Korea back on ‘state sponsors of terrorism’ list

Posted February. 24, 2017 07:14,   

Updated February. 24, 2017 07:20

한국어

There are mounting calls in the United States for adding North Korea back to the State Department list of states sponsoring terrorism following the Malaysian police’s announcement that Pyongyang was directly involved in the assassination of Kim Jong Nam, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s half-brother.

“The murder of Kim Jong-un's half-brother is yet another reminder of North Korea's brutality,” said Cory Gardner, a Republican senator of Colorado and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cyber Security Policy. “I am in support of relisting North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism.”

Last week, Gardner and five other senators sent a joint letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, calling for positively considering the North’s re-listing as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Representative Ted Poe, a Texas Republican who introduced a bill last month that would put North Korea back on the state sponsors of terrorism list, also put fresh pressure on the U.S. government recently for the proposed re-listing in the event that the North is found to be the mastermind behind Kim Jong Nam’s assassination. The bill calls on the U.S. government to investigate terrorism cases in which the North is believed to be behind within 90 days of the bill’s passage and submit the probe results to Congress. If the North’s support of terrorism is proven, the U.S. government put North Korea back on the list.

The U.S. first put the North on the list in January 1988 after North Korean agents exploded a South Korean commercial airliner in the previous year but removed it from the list in November 2008 for progress in negotiations for the North’s denuclearization. Despite revived calls for the North’s re-listing following the 2009 nuclear test, the 2010 military attacks on South Korea and the 2014 hacking of Sony Pictures, the Barack Obama administration refused to do so. Currently, the U.S. lists three countries – Iran, Sudan and Syria – as state sponsors of terrorism.

Lim Sung-nam, South Korea’s first vice foreign minister, told the National Assembly committee on foreign affairs that Seoul will hold necessary consultations with the U.S. over the Congressional bill calling for putting the North back on the state sponsor of terrorism list and take the initiative depending on the situation. Lim also noted that Seoul is considering bringing up the issue of Kim Jong Nam’s assassination as part of the North’ human rights violations at the 34th regular session of the United Nations Human Rights Council that is scheduled to begin on February 27 in Geneva, Switzerland. Chief negotiators of South Korea, the U.S. and Japan are also to hold talks on the same day.



Jung-Min Dong ditto@donga.com · Soong-Ho Cho shcho@donga.com