State Department Leaves North Korea Off of State Sponsors of Terrorism List

Considering how North Korea has never apologized or compensated any families of the people killed in the 1987 Korean Air bombing like Libya did to get off of this list, the North Koreans should have never been removed from this list in the first place:

The United States left out North Korea from its list of states sponsoring terrorism despite calls for adding Pyongyang to the list in the wake of a massive hacking attack on Sony Pictures late last year.

“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 State Department said in Country Reports on Terrorism 2014, referring to the North’s official name.

North Korea was put on the U.S. terrorism sponsor list for the 1987 midair bombing of a Korean Air flight that killed all 115 people aboard. But the U.S. administration of former President George W. Bush removed Pyongyang from the list in 2008 in exchange for progress in denuclearization talks.

Calls grew for redesignating Pyongyang as a state terrorism sponsor after the FBI determined the North was responsible for the cyber-attack on Sony Pictures last November, but the State Department was negative about its effectiveness.  [Yonhap]

You can read the rest at the link, but notice that they were removed from the list in 2008 by the Bush administration for promises of making progress in denuclearization.  History has now shown how well that has worked out.