North Korea Is Taken off U.S. Drug-Trafficking Countries List

Bloomberg (h/t One Free Korea)
Bomi Lim
9/19/2007

North Korea was dropped from the U.S. list of countries producing illicit drugs, a sign of further relief of tensions between the two countries.

“North Korea is not affecting the United States as much as the requirements on the list,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Christy McCampbell said on Sept. 17 in Washington, according to a transcript of her speech on the State Department Web site.

Ties are improving between the U.S. and North Korea after a February agreement on ending the government in Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program. As North Korea moves to scale back the program, the U.S. has promised to review ways of improving ties with the communist country, including removing it from a list of states that sponsor terrorism.

North Korea agreed to a year-end deadline to disclose and disable its nuclear facilities after it shut down and sealed its sole operating reactor at Yongbyon in July.

North Korea was first mentioned in the annual presidential report on “major illegal drug transit and drug-producing countries” in 2003, when President George W. Bush said the U.S. would fight the country’s suspected drug trafficking.

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