Filed Under: Current Events, Defense, Human Rights, In the News, North Korea, Politics, Publications

“The recently released 2012 Country Report on Terrorism repeats the U.S. State Department’s assertion, “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.” Perhaps the report’s drafters should have checked with the President before they made this indefensible claim. In 2005, then-Senator Barack Obama expressed a decidedly different view of Pyongyang’s terrorist activities.” ~ Dennis P. Halpin

In response to the recently released 2012 Country Report on Terrorism, Dennis P. Halpin, former House Foreign Relations Committee staff member and current Visiting Scholar at the US-Korea Institute at SAIS, challenges the report’s characterization of North Korea’s record on terrorism and the sponsorship of terrorism. In this policy brief, Halpin offers eight examples that could be construed as contradictory to the report’s findings, including a high-profile case endorsed by President Obama himself (then Illinois Senator) as recently as 2005.

Download USKI Policy Brief “Obama Letter Contradicts State Department’s North Korean Terrorism Timeline” by Dennis P. Halpin.

Dennis P. Halpin is currently a visiting scholar at the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in South Korea, U.S. consul in Pusan, and a House Foreign Affairs Committee staff member for over twelve years.