President Donald Trump revealed his intentions to declare North Korea as a state sponsor of terror.
“In addition to threatening the world by nuclear devastation, North Korea has repeatedly supported acts of including assassinations on foreign soil,” Trump said.
The president made his remarks to reporters as he met with his cabinet at the White House on Monday.
“Should have happened a long time ago,” Trump said. “Should have happened years ago.”
He referred to the death of American prisoner Otto Warmbier and “countless others” brutalized by the North Korean regime.
Trump said the announcement was only part of his “maximum pressure campaign” to isolate the North Korean regime in response to their actions.
In 2008, President George W. Bush took the regime off the list.
Trump also previewed new sanctions that the Treasury Department were preparing to level against North Korea.
“The North Korean regime must be lawful,” Trump said. “It must end its unlawful nuclear and ballistic missile development, and cease all support for international terrorism — which it is not doing.”