North Korea Designated as Terror Supporting Country Again

North Korea Designated as Terror Supporting Country Again. April. 30, 2004 20:54. by Soon-Taek Kwon maypole@donga.com.

North Korea has once again been designated as a terror-supporting country along with Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, and Syria.

The U.S. State Department designated North Korea because of the abduction of Japanese and the return of the 1970 JAL hijackers in their 2003 World Terror Report.

North Korea, which insisted on being removed from the list, is expected to react negatively to this and this is speculated to harm the North Korea nuclear problem negotiation.

The report stated, “Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syria did not take any action against terrorism and so does not show any difference from 2002. North Korea, a terror-related international negotiation and protocol country, did not take any practical action to fight terrorism.”

Richard Armitage, deputy secretary of U.S. State Department, said in his news conference, “If North Korea wants to be erased from the list, it should no longer support international terror groups or have contacts with them.”

Copper Black, coordinator of the U.S. State Department against terrorism, announced, “The problem of sending hijacked Japanese families back should be solved. The abduction issue is one of the biggest reasons for naming North Korea as a terror-supporting country.”

It is known that the issue of Japanese abduction was mentioned in the report due to Japan’s request.

However, the report somehow positively evaluated as it stated, “Kim Jong-il approved that a special organization was involved in the September 2002 Japanese abduction and is under negotiation for sending back the kidnapped Japanese and is trying hard to solve the Red Army problem.”

The report, in its general evaluation for terror sponsoring countries, said, “Libya and Sudan initiated practical action to aid in the war against terrorism and Iraq’s terror-supporting-government has been removed,” making their probability of being erased from the next year’s list high.