Trump Returns "Murderous Regime" North Korea To Terrorism Blacklist

US President Donald Trump has returned North Korea to the list of state-sponsored terrorism.

The provocative political move was announced in Washington yesterday and Trump said to reporters ahead of a cabinet meeting that it, “should have happened a long time ago”.

North Korea will now join Sudan, Syria and Iran as countries identified by the State Department as those who have:

“Repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism”.

According to the President, the highest levels of sanctions will now follow for North Korea in a bid to force the cease of its nuclear and ballistic missile development.

Earlier this year Trump ushered out President Barack Obama’s policy of “strategic patience”, opting instead for “fire and fury” as well as the “complete denuclearisation” of North Korea.

Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson added to the Presidents comments at the White House:

“This just continues to tighten the pressure on the Kim regime, all with an intention to have him understand that this is only going to get worse until you are ready to come and talk.”.

The US President denounced the “murderous regime” in the North, stating that the country had supported “assassinations on foreign soil”.

Neither Trump nor the administration specified which acts of terrorism and assassination the North had supported, however, the decision has been debated for a month inside the administration.

The step is likely to further sour relations between Washington and Pyongyang that have turned uglier with name-calling between Trump and Kim Jong Un.

Evans Revere, a former senior State Department official said North Korea is already livid with Trump and is likely to react “quickly and emotionally”.

In 2008, President George W. Bush removed North Korea from the terrorism blacklist.

Prior to that is had been on the list for two decades after the 1987 bombing of a South Korean airliner killed 115 people.

The North was also accused of a 1983 bombing assassination attempt against then-SouthKorean president Chun Doo-hwan in Burma.

The president survived, but 21 others were killed.

The North has not been publicly implicated in a terror attack of that scale since.

Cover photo: DVIDS