By Felicia Schwartz in Washington and Jonathan Cheng in Seoul
President Donald Trump said the U.S. would reinstate its
designation of North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism, a week
after Mr. Trump finished a trip across Asia in which he pressed for
more action to stifle Pyongyang's weapons development.
Mr. Trump said during a cabinet meeting on Monday that the move
will mark the highest level of U.S. criticism and "should have
happened a long time ago."
He cited Otto Warmbier, the American college student who died in
June shortly after returning to the U.S. from North Korean custody,
as a reason for the action. Trump administration officials also
have referred to other North Korean actions over the past year as
terror acts, including Pyongyang's alleged role in the poisoning
death of Kim Jong Un's half-brother in Kuala Lumpur's international
airport using a banned chemical nerve agent.
North Korea was on the list of state sponsors of terrorism for
decades before the George W. Bush administration removed it in 2008
to spur Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons program.
Mr. Trump said the designation amounts to an escalated effort by
the U.S. to isolate the Kim regime, which he called brutal and
murderous.
"This designation will impose further sanctions," he said,
adding that Treasury measures would be significant, though he
didn't provide details.
He said North Korea "must end its unlawful nuclear and ballistic
missile development" and end its support for international
terrorism.
The redesignation had been signaled by officials ahead of Mr.
Trump's Asia trip and found quick support Monday among Republican
lawmakers.
Rep. Ed Royce (R., Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign
Affairs Committee, said it "rightly exposes the Kim regime's utter
disregard for human life and is an important step in our efforts to
apply maximum diplomatic and financial pressure on Kim Jong
Un."
Experts and former officials said redesignating North Korea
could carry some added financial consequences, but the designation
alone is unlikely to prompt significant changes in the current
sanctions regime, after the U.S. imposed new measures this year to
turn up the pressure on Pyongyang.
The designation would open the way for civil liability claims
against Pyongyang for acts of terrorism against Americans and
impose more disclosure requirements on the banking industry, said
Joshua Stanton, a Washington-based lawyer who has helped draft U.S.
sanctions against North Korea.
Beyond that, "the sanctions that would be imposed are not all
that different from the sanctions that have already been passed
through the U.N. Security Council," said Robert King, the U.S.
special envoy on North Korean human rights under the Obama
administration. "There's nothing new that comes in."
Mr. King said Pyongyang is likely to regard the move as a direct
affront. North Korea has protested previous efforts by the U.S. to
personally sanction Mr. Kim and to label the country's leadership
as violators of human rights, calling them acts of war.
"It only becomes a big deal if the North Koreans make it a big
deal," Mr. King said. "If it passes and they don't say anything,
then it's pretty ho-hum."
Officials with North Korea's United Nations mission couldn't be
reached for comment on Monday.
Some experts wondered if the designation would have an effect on
North Korea's behavior -- and if so, whether it might push
Pyongyang toward a more bellicose posture.
"Re-designation is unlikely to change North Korean behavior or
pressure the regime to return to the negotiating table, at least in
the short run, " said Andrew Yeo, a politics professor at Catholic
University of America in Washington. "In fact, it actually closes
another door towards diplomatic engagement by creating an
additional hurdle for normalizing relations with the United
States."
Mr. Yeo said a North Korea's response could be another round of
provocations, including possible weapons tests or cyberattacks.
Advocates of a terror designation have pushed for the relisting
in recent months, pointing to North Korea's role in the deaths of
the Mr. Kim's half brother Kim Jong Nam and of Mr. Warmbier, a
21-year-old University of Virginia undergraduate who died six days
after North Korea returned him to the U.S. in a coma.
Mr. Warmbier, who had traveled to North Korea on a tour, was
held in a coma by Pyongyang authorities for more than a year,
without any updated information to his family, before he was
returned to the U.S. His parents have campaigned publicly for the
U.S. to redesignate North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism,
based in part on their son's death.
North Korea was on the list alongside Iran, Sudan and Syria,
because of Pyongyang's roles in the attempted assassination of the
South Korean president during a visit to Myanmar and the bombing of
a Korean Air jet liner during the 1980s.
Months before he left office, Mr. Bush removed North Korea from
the list and unveiled a package of humanitarian aid, inducements
that were framed as part of a deal to get North Korea to give up
its nuclear weapons.
North Korea has continued to defy international norms. Since
2008, it has conducted five nuclear tests, and launched scores of
missiles, while threatening to destroy its neighbors and the
U.S.
Advocates of the designation said that whatever its practical
effects, the symbolism alone justifies the move. To leave North
Korea off the U.S. list of state sponsors of terror "would be
untrue, as a matter of both the overwhelming evidence and the law,"
said Mr. Stanton, the Washington lawyer.
Louise Radnofsky and Michael C. Bender contributed to this
article.
Write to Felicia Schwartz at Felicia.Schwartz@wsj.com and
Jonathan Cheng at jonathan.cheng@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 20, 2017 14:26 ET (19:26 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.