hankyoreh

The draft of next year’s defense budget that recently passed the US House of Representatives adds North Korea to a list of state sponsors of terrorism, the Hankyoreh confirmed on May 18.

Before passing the National Defense Authorization Act, which authorizes the defense budget, the US House of Representatives added a section (Sec. 1092) that would appoint “an existing federal officer to coordinate efforts to secure the release of US citizens who are hostages of hostile groups or state sponsors of terrorism.” This office would be in charge of coordinating all activities by related government agencies to have hostages released and of providing information to the hostages’ families in a timely manner.

Proposed by Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), the section explains what it means to be a state sponsor of terrorism and includes North Korea on the list of countries already designated by the US State Department. After the recent decision to remove Cuba, the US list of state sponsors of terrorism currently includes three countries: Iran, Sudan, and Syria.

Designating a state sponsor of terror is the prerogative of the US State Department. Consequently, even if this bill passes the Senate, it has no direct bearing on the US State Department’s official list of state sponsors of terrorism. However, it could conceivably have some effect on US State Department decisions to designate state sponsors of terrorism.

When a particular country is found to have repeatedly supported international acts of terrorism, the US State Department designates that country as a state sponsor of terrorism.

After the bombing of Korean Air Flight 858 in 1987, the US State Department designated North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism, only removing it from the list in 2008. After the hacking attack on Sony Pictures at the end of 2014, there were some calls inside the US to put North Korea back on the list.

It is not known precisely why Rep. Hunter described North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism. Americans are more frequently taken hostage in the Middle East and North Africa, but over the past few years a number of US citizens have been detained in North Korea, which is thought to have affected Hunter’s decision.

The best-known example is Korean-American Kenneth Bae, who entered North Korea in Nov. 2012 and was detained for two years before finally being released.

By Park Hyun, Washington correspondent

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