A new section has been added to the U.S. defense budget bill for next year that describes North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism, congressional records showed Sunday.

The new section (Sec. 1092) was added to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016 at the last minute before the legislation passed through the House of Representatives on Thursday, according to the records.

Included at the suggestion of Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), the section was almost identical to the Hostage Recovery Improvement Act (H.R. 1498) that the lawmaker introduced to the House in late March with support from 11 co-sponsors.

It calls for the president to designate "an existing federal officer to coordinate efforts to secure the release of U.S. citizens who are hostages of hostile groups or state sponsors of terrorism." The "Interagency Hostage Recovery Coordinator" should be named within 60 days after the bill's enactment.

While defining the term "state sponsors of terrorism," the bill singled out North Korea as a country that should be considered a terrorism sponsor nation under the legislation, even though Pyongyang is no longer on the State Department's list of states sponsoring terrorism.

North Korea was put on the U.S. terrorism sponsor list for the 1987 midair bombing of a Korean Air flight that killed all 115 people aboard. But the U.S. administration of former President George W. Bush removed Pyongyang from the list in 2008 in exchange for progress in denuclearization talks.

Calls grew for redesignating Pyongyang as a state terrorism sponsor after the FBI determined the North was responsible for the cyber-attack on Sony Pictures last November, but the State Department was negative about its effectiveness.

According to the legislation, the coordinator is tasked with coordinating and directing "all activities of the federal government ... to ensure efforts to secure the release of all hostages ... are properly resourced and correct lines of authority are established and maintained."

The officer should also establish a task force consisting of appropriate personnel of the federal government with respect to each hostage situation and submit to Congress a quarterly report on each hostage situation and efforts to secure their release, the bill said. (Yonhap)