Earlier this month, the U.S. announced that North Korea would remain on its list of state sponsors of terrorism for the fourth consecutive year, sharing the ignominious designation with Cuba, Iran and Syria. The Trump administration had returned the DPRK to the list in 2017, and before that, it had been on the list for more than 20 years from 1987 to 2008.

Pyongyang’s history of aiding and abetting terrorist activity, however, goes back to well before the U.S. ever gave it the moniker of “state sponsor.”

From the late 1960s to the mid-1980s, North Korea gained recognition around the