Has North Korea Not Committed Terrorism in Over 25 Years?
Via One Free Korea comes this Foreign Policy article where the author Micah Zenko doesn’t believe North Korea is a state sponsor of terrorism:
On Friday, Dec. 19, the FBI declared that it “has enough information to conclude that the North Korean government is responsible” for the purported hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment. Soon after, President Barack Obama warned, “We will respond proportionally, and we’ll respond in a place and time and manner that we choose.” Given the relatively meager leverage that the United States — at least unilaterally — has over North Korea, there are precious few practical response options that would deter future comparable malicious actions. According to a senior administration officials, one option under consideration is placing North Korea back on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, from where it was removed in 2008. Those included on the list are, “Countries determined by the Secretary of State to have repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.”
A small problem with such a designation is that North Korea simply is not a state-sponsor of terrorism. As the latest State Department Country Reports on Terrorism explicitly stated: “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 North Korean sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan in March 2010 was deemed a violation of the 1953 armistice agreement, but was also declared by a State Department spokesperson to have been “a provocative action but one taken by the military or the state against the military of another state. That, in our view, does not constitute an act of international terrorism.” Thus, by putting it back on the terrorism list, North Korea would be proportionally responded to by reclassifying its government for undertaking a behavior that the United States acknowledges it does not actually do. [Foreign Policy]
You can read the rest at the link, but it is amazing how much this guy leaves out to support his position. As One Free Korea writes there has been a number of kidnap and assassination attempts and arming of terrorist groups carried out by the Kim regime. Also using this guy’s logic in regards to the sinking of the Cheonan, was the marine barracks bombing in Lebanon not terrorism as well then? Or how about Khobar towers or the attack on the USS Cole? These were all attacks against non-hostile military targets just like what happened with the Cheonan. Zenko also leaves out the fact that North Korea shelled an island killing civilians. What does Zenko define that as? Most importantly North Korea has never come clean on the 1987 Korean Air bombing. When Libya came off of the terrorism list they had to make huge concessions in regards to their responsibility for downing Pan Am Flight 103. Why hasn’t North Korea been forced to make these same concessions to get off the list in the first place?
