House Subcommittee Chair calls for re-listing North Korea as a terror sponsor

Last month, I posted video of a hearing before the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Non-proliferation and Trade, where Chairman Ted Poe of Texas and Ranking Member Brad Sherman of California grilled a hapless State Department official about North Korea’s sponsorship of terrorism, and why North Korea wasn’t listed. State’s performance at the hearing wasn’t just bad, but exceptionally so. Poe and Sherman were both visibly exasperated with State’s stonewalling, and seemed convinced that State was ignoring the law. Now, Poe has put his views in writing, listing the justifications for a re-listing at length:

Pyongyang has known links to the tyrannical regimes in Tehran and Damascus, and there have been several instances in the past decade in which North Korea’s two Middle Eastern clients transferred North Korean arms to Hezbollah and Hamas. In 2009 alone, three North Korean arms shipments were seized by UAE, Israeli, and Thai authorities.

In all three cases, press reports indicated that the arms were bound for terrorist groups. In July 2014, Western security sources told media outlets that Hamas brokered an agreement to purchase communications equipment and artillery rockets from the Kim regime. Sure enough, North Korean anti-tank guided missiles surfaced in Gaza that same year.

But weapons sales are not the whole picture of North Korea’s ties to terrorist groups – there is growing evidence of Pyongyang’s advisory role to these violent organizations. Press reports in 2014 suggested that North Koreans advised Hezbollah in the construction of tunnels in Southern Lebanon in 2003-2004. Israeli military commanders believe that North Korea also provided logistical advice on Hamas’ tunnel network which it infamously used to attack Israeli civilian populations.

North Korea is also still a major proliferator of weapons of mass destruction. Its ongoing collaboration on ballistic missiles with Iran, the world’s number one state sponsor of terrorism, is well known. According to reports the two countries are presently working on the development of an intercontinental ballistic missile that could allow North Korea to deliver a nuclear warhead far beyond its shores. [Fox News]

If I have one regret, it’s that Poe didn’t raise North Korea’s kidnapping and assassination plots against human rights activists and exiled dissidents in China and South Korea. But when the evidence for a state’s sponsorship of terrorism is extensive enough to fill a 100-page report, you can’t fault a man for not being able to squeeze it all into one op-ed.

Poe’s call adds to other prominent members of Congress of both parties who want North Korea re-listed, including Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Senator Robert Menendez.

Meanwhile, we’re approaching the first anniversary of North Korea’s cyberterrorist threats that forced a stupid movie called “The Interview” out of theaters all over America. It was the first time in U.S. history that a foreign government successfully used terrorism against the American people, in their own country, to censor our freedom of expression. The Obama Administration’s response so far has been to sanction ten low-level arms dealers and three other entities that the Treasury Department had already sanctioned previously. A year later, I still wonder when our President will keep his oath to preserve, protect, and defend the most important freedom guaranteed to us under our Constitution.