S. Korea, Japan hails listing of N. Korea as terror sponsor

SEOUL: South Korea and Japan yesterday welcomed US President Donald Trump putting North Korea back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism, saying it would ramp up pressure on Pyongyang to denuclearise the Korean peninsula.

The designation, announced on Monday, allows the United States to impose more sanctions on Pyongyang, which is pursuing nuclear weapons and missile programmes in defiance of UN Security Council sanctions.

“I welcome and support (the designation) as it raises the pressure on North Korea,” Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters, according to Kyodo news agency.

South Korea said it expected the listing to contribute to the peaceful denuclearisation of the North, adding it continued, along with the United States, to seek to bring North Korea to the negotiating table, the country’s foreign ministry said in a text message.

Trump’s re-listing of North Korea as a sponsor of terrorism

I welcome and support (the designation) as it raises the pressure on North Korea. Shinzo Abe, Japan Prime Minister

comes a week after he returned from a 12-day trip to Asia in which containing North Korea’s nuclear ambitions was a centre piece of his discussions.

“In addition to threatening the world by nuclear devastation, North Korea has repeatedly supported acts of international terrorism, including assassinations on foreign soil,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

“This designation will impose further sanctions and penalties on North Korea and related persons and supports our maximum pressure campaign to isolate the murderous regime.”

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also backed Trump’s decision, saying the move was in line with international efforts to bring the rogue state to its senses.

“Kim Jong Un runs a global criminal operation from North Korea peddling arms, peddling drugs, engaged in cyber crime and of course threatening the stability of region with his nuclear weapons,” Turnbull told reporters in Sydney.

“So we strongly welcome that decision and it mirrors the determination of the international community on bringing North Korea back to its senses.”

Trump, who has often criticised his predecessors’ policies toward Pyongyang, said the designation should have been made “a long time ago”.

North Korea was put on the US terrorism sponsor list for the 1987 bombing of a Korean Air flight that killed all 115 people aboard. But the administration of former President George W Bush, a Republican, removed Pyongyang in 2008 in exchange for progress in denuclearisation talks.

Experts say the designation will be largely symbolic as North Korea is already heavily sanctioned by the United States. — Reuters

Song Tao (centre), head of the International Liaison Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, at Mangyongdae Revolutionary School. Song’s visit is the first by a senior Chinese envoy for more than a year. During the four-day...