North Korea is Unhappy With Being Relisted on the US State Sponsors of Terrorism List

This is something that should have been done a long time ago, but it took using a nerve agent in an international airport before finally getting relisted:

North Korea bristled at the United States on Wednesday for re-listing Pyongyang as a state sponsor of terrorism, calling the move by Washington a “serious provocation.”

The North’s foreign ministry spokesman told its state media that Pyongyang would continue to strengthen its deterrent force against the U.S. hostile policy.

U.S. President Donald Trump put North Korea back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism for the first time in nine years, stepping up pressure on the North to give up its nuclear weapons ambition.

A day after the re-listing, Washington on Tuesday imposed new sanctions targeting Chinese and North Korean entities and vessels suspected of aiding North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

North Korea said the U.S. re-listing is “a serious provocation and a violent infringement upon our dignified country.”

“The U.S. will be held entirely accountable for all the consequences to be entailed by its impudent provocation to the DPRK (North Korea),” the North Korean ministry spokesman said.  [Yonhap]

The North Koreans were removed from the State Sponsor of Terrorism list in 2008 for denuclearization promises which they have never kept.  The State Department has refused to add them back to the list ever since despite them never answering for terrorist incidents against South Korea to include a hijacking where ROK citizens are still held hostage in North Korea.  It seems the North Koreans should have never been taken off the list until they came clean and paid reparations for these prior crimes.