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Laura Rozen has a letter that Queens Congressman Gary Ackerman — no relation — wrote to Secretary Clinton urging the State Department re-designate North Korea a state sponsor of terrorism now that an international investigation has concluded that a NoKo torpedo most likely sunk a South Korean naval vessel, killing 46 sailors.
“As the recent sinking of the Republic of Korea warship Cheonan has demonstrated, North Korea is, in fact, intent on pursuing the opposite policy of ours, namely, undermining peace and increasing tensions in northeast Asia,” Ackerman wrote Clinton in a letter.
“The apparently unprovoked sneak attack on the Cheonan, by North Korea, and the murder of 46 Republic of Korea sailors sailing in home waters, is a clear potential causus belli, and unquestionably the most belligerent and provocative incident since the 1953 armistice was established,” he continued.
If the North indeed launched the torpedo (I don’t doubt it, I just haven’t seen the investigation), then that’s clearly a hostile and provocative act. It’s also a military act against an enemy military. Nothing here is terrorism. Not all aggression is terrorism. If Ackerman thinks a punitive measure like re-designation on the SST list is a good course of policy action in solidarity with our South Korean allies, that’s one thing, but this just isn’t terrorism we’re talking about.
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While other-Ackerman didn’t address this, the North was added to the state sponsor list in 1988 because it sold weapons to terrorist groups and gave asylum to Japanese Communist League-Red Army Faction members. The country is also responsible for the Rangoon bombing and the bombing of Korean Air Flight 858 that year.
Also, around this time last year, Secretary Clinton publicly mused adding DPRK back to the state sponsors list over its nuclear testing and missile overflights.
Technically, none of those things, including the sinking of the Cheonan, qualify a typical social studies definition of terror. At the same time, especially when one ponders the role the North plays in nuclear proliferation, missile technology (especially to groups like Hezbollah), and so on… it’s not entirely out of the blue to consider putting them back on the list.
Which makes it all the more odd that the call to put them back on the SST list comes after the DPRK does something that isn’t terrorism.
That’s absolutely a fair point. I guess what I was saying is that there are other, valid reasons to put them back on the list.
Technically North and South Korea have been at war since 1950. The Korean peninsula has been under an Armistice since 1953 but North Korea backed out of the Armistice last year in protest over US/South Korean joint naval exercises.