North Korea:
President Trump returns Kim Jong Un’s government to the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Monday officially designated North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism, a provocative diplomatic move that he said is aimed at dramatically increasing pressure on the rogue nation to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
The president, who has repeatedly used fiery language to threaten and demean North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, made the announcement Monday. North Korea will join Sudan, Syria and Iran as countries that the State Department identifies as ones that have “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.”
“Should have happened a long time ago,” Trump said at the start of a Cabinet meeting at the White House. The president said the designation will lead to new, tougher sanctions on North Korea, which he said “must end its unlawful nuclear and ballistic missile development.”
Trump has vowed to seek “complete denuclearization” in North Korea and has threatened “fire and fury” aimed at the country if it endangers the United States. The president ordered an end to the policy of “strategic patience” pursued by his immediate predecessor in the hopes that North Korea’s leader would eventually agree to negotiate.
Still, it is unclear whether the terror designation will provide the president with new and powerful leverage to force nuclear negotiations or will simply deepen the rhetorical war of words between Trump and Kim, whom the president has mockingly called “Little Rocket Man.”
Long a pariah in the international community, North Korea was put on Washington’s list of state sponsors of terrorism in 1987 after Pyongyang’s agents planted a bomb that blew up a South Korean passenger jet, killing all 115 people on board. That attack was led by Kim Jong Il, the late father of current leader Kim Jong Un, according to one of the agents, who was caught alive.
North Korea was removed from the official State Department terror list nearly 20 years later by President George W. Bush, who in 2008 saw it as an opportunity to salvage a fragile nuclear deal in which North Korea would agree to halt its nuclear program.
In fact, North Korea secretly continued to develop nuclear weapons, detonating one soon after the start of President Barack Obama’s administration in 2009.