News analysis

Putting Pyongyang back on terror list symbolically ratchets up US-North Korea stand-off

US President Donald Trump speaks to the media during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington. PHOTO: EPA-EFE

WASHINGTON (BLOOMBERG) - US President Donald Trump said he is designating North Korea a state sponsor of terrorism, subjecting the regime to additional sanctions and reinforcing its status as an international pariah.

Speaking at the start of a cabinet meeting at the White House, Mr Trump said the Treasury Department will announce additional measures on Tuesday (Nov 21), describing the move against Kim Jong Un's regime as "a very large one".

The step at least symbolically ratchets up the roiling stand-off between the US and North Korea over Pyongyang's programme to develop nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles that could hit the US mainland.

Mr Trump returned last week from a five-nation tour of Asia in which the confrontation with North Korea figured prominently and the US President pressed countries in the region to intensify restrictions on the regime.

"Today, the United States is designating North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism," Mr Trump said on Monday.

"Should have happened a long time ago. Should have happened years ago. In addition to threatening the world with nuclear devastation, North Korea has repeatedly supported acts of international terrorism including assassinations on foreign soil."

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The accusation about assassinations on foreign soil may be a reference to the February killing of the North Korean leader's half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, at the Kuala Lumpur airport. Kim Jong Nam, who had been living in exile, died after VX nerve agent was spread on his face and eyes.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson acknowledged that the signal the designation sends may be more important than its practical impact because "we already have North Korea so heavily sanctioned in so many ways".

"It just points out again what a rogue regime this is," Mr Tillerson told reporters at the daily White House briefing.

"The practical effects may be limited, but hopefully we are closing off a few loopholes with this."

North Korea becomes the fourth nation on the US terrorist list, joining Iran, Sudan and Syria. Cuba had been on the list but was removed by then President Barack Obama in 2015.

North Korea previously had been designated a sponsor of terrorism but was removed in 2008 under Republican President George W. Bush in an effort to salvage a fragile nuclear deal.

That deal later collapsed, and in the years since, North Korea has made steady progress on developing a nuclear weapon and the ballistic-missile technology to hit the US.

Stanford University physicist Siegfried Hecker estimates North Korea has enough material for as many as 25 nuclear weapons. However, many analysts doubt whether North Korea has yet developed the ballistic missile technology that would let a warhead survive reentry into the atmosphere.

The regime in Pyongyang had requested that the Bush administration remove it from the list as part of the 2008 process, a move that was "very politically symbolic to the North Koreans", said Brian Egan, a partner at Steptoe & Johnson LLP and a State Department legal adviser under Barack Obama.

"This will not significantly increase the sanctions that the United States has in place against North Korea," Egan said.

The terrorism designation allows the US to step up sanctions on people and countries that engage in trade with North Korea, according to a State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of a formal announcement.

It also bans defence exports and sales, boosts restrictions on exports of dual-use items and affects financial transactions.

The most significant legal change is that US citizens will now be able to sue North Korea over terrorism allegations, according to Anthony Ruggiero, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for Defence of Democracies.

Congress had passed legislation that set a deadline for the beginning of November for the administration to make a designation one way or the other.

The decision dovetails with the administration's "peaceful pressure" campaign to persuade other countries to cut off diplomatic and trade ties with North Korea as a way to strangle its economy and get it to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

"Now the Trump administration can go overseas and say to countries, 'Do you really want to be engaged in commercial or financial relations with North Korea, which is now a state sponsor of terrorism?"' Ruggiero said. "For a lot of people, this is long overdue."

Earlier this month, a senior State Department official said the administration was waiting on the verdict in the Malaysia trial of two women who were accused of carrying out the VX attack on Kim Jong Nam. The official, who asked not to be identified to discuss internal deliberations, said it would be good to have the trial done. However, in the days since, it's become clear that the trial could drag well into 2018.

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