A U.S. senator has introduced a bill calling for redesignating North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism and additional sanctions on the communist regime.
  

Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO), chairman of the subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and international cyber-security policy, introduced the bill (S.Res.180) on Tuesday, saying North Korea represents a serious threat to the national security of the United States and its allies in the region and beyond.
  

The resolution "urges the secretary of state and the secretary of the treasury to impose additional sanctions against the DPRK, including targeting its financial assets around the world, specific designations relating to human rights abuses and a redesignation of the DPRK as a state sponsor of terror."
  

DPRK is the acronym for the North's official name.
  

The bill came after the House of Representatives passed the defense budget bill for next year after making a last-minute addition of a section branding North Korea as a terrorism sponsor, even though Pyongyang is no longer on the State Department's terrorism sponsor list.
  

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 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.
  

The resolution also warns President Barack Obama "against resuming the negotiations with the DPRK, either bilaterally or as part of the six-party talks, without strict preconditions."
  

Preconditions include honoring a 2005 denuclearization agreement, halting ballistic missile programs and proliferation activities, ceasing military provocations and improving its human rights record "measurably and significantly."
  

"The North Korean regime has a long history of belligerence toward the free world and brutal repression of its own people," Gardner said in a statement. "It's clear that the administration's current policy of so-called 'strategic patience' with regard to North Korea has been a failure, and it's time to change course." (Yonhap)