President Donald Trump announced Monday that the United States would once again designate North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism, reversing a change made under the George W. Bush administration.
“Today the United States is designating North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism. Should have happened a long time ago,” Trump told reporters at the beginning of a Monday morning Cabinet meeting.
Trump said that the formal declaration will be issued Tuesday, along with increased sanctions on North Korea that will be “the highest level of sanctions” ever. Trump called Kim Jong-un’s government a “murderous regime” supporting “acts of international terrorism,” and once again called on the nation to “end its unlawful nuclear and ballistic missile development” programs.
The Los Angeles Times reports that officials are citing the murder of Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of Kim Jong-un, as an act of terror. Two women are on trial for poisoning Kim Jong-nam with VX gas in a Malaysian airport last February. THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s Ethan Epstein detailed several other acts of terror by Pongyang shortly after Kim Jong-nam’s death.
George W. Bush had removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terror in 2008 to try to salvage a nuclear disarmament agreement. (TWS disparaged the move at the time.)
Ohio senator Rob Portman, part of bipartisan group of lawmakers who has been pressuring the administration to act on this matter, issued a statement on Monday: “North Korea was removed from the list nearly a decade ago with promises from the regime to limit their nuclear program. That clearly hasn’t happened and they have continued their destabilizing actions in the region. Their long history of transferring weapons and technology to state-sponsors of terrorism like Iran and Syria, the assassination of a Kim family member on foreign soil, and the brutal treatment of Otto Warmbier, ultimately leading to his death, are only some recent examples of the evil nature of this regime.”
