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US leaves out North Korea from terrorism sponsors list

June 19, 2015

By Chang Jae-soon

WASHINGTON, June 19 (Yonhap) — The United States left out North Korea from its list of states sponsoring terrorism despite calls for adding Pyongyang to the list in the wake of a massive hacking attack on Sony Pictures late last year.

“The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1987,” the State Department said in Country Reports on Terrorism 2014, referring to the North’s official name.

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

Calls grew for redesignating Pyongyang as a state terrorism sponsor after the FBI determined the North was responsible for the cyber-attack on Sony Pictures last November, but the State Department was negative about its effectiveness.

The latest report said that the North was removed from the list “in accordance with criteria set forth in U.S. law, including a certification that the DPRK had not provided any support for international terrorism during the preceding six-month period and the provision by the DPRK of assurances that it would not support acts of international terrorism in the future.”

The report also noted that four Japanese Red Army members who participated in a 1970 jet hijacking continued to live in the North and that Japan continued to seek a full accounting of the fate of 12 of its nationals believed to have been abducted by the communist nation in the 1970s and 1980s.

“In May 2014, the DPRK agreed to re-open its investigation into the abductions, but as of the end of 2014 had not yet provided the results of this investigation to Japan,” the report said.

The report also said that the U.S. recertified North Korea in May as a country “not cooperating fully” with U.S. counterterrorism efforts. It also said the North is not a member of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on money laundering.

“In July 2014, it was admitted as an observer, but not a full member,” it said. “Nevertheless, the DPRK failed to demonstrate meaningful progress in strengthening its anti-money laundering/countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) infrastructure.”

The report listed Cuba, Iran, Syria and Sudan as state sponsors of terrorism.

The U.S. delisted Cuba as a terror sponsor last month as the two sides have been working to restore full diplomatic relations. But the Caribbean was included in the latest list because it is a report for 2014.