US May Put North Korea Back on Terror List

By Staff Reporter - 22 Dec '14 08:41AM

Terming the Sony hacking incident as an "act of cyber-vandalism", U.S. President Barack Obama said that the country may put North Korea back on the terror list.

The President said that the hack cost the Hollywood studio very dearly and this act could land the impenetrable country back on the terror list. North Korea's name was on the list for two decades before it was removed by the Bush administration in 2008 during nuclear talks.

"We're going to review those [issues] through a process that's already in place. I'll wait to review what the findings are," the President told CNN in an interview broadcast on Sunday, The Guardian reports.

Even though North Korea has denied its hand behind the cyber attack on Sony Pictures, American authorities believe that the hackers were supported by the country.

The cyber attack was aimed at stalling the release of comedy flick 'The Interview', whose plot revolves around the assassination of North Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong-un.

"We have got very clear criteria as to what it means for a state to sponsor terrorism, and we don't make those judgments just based on the news of the day. We look systematically at what's been done," President Obama told CNN in an interview broadcast Sunday.

Sony cancelled the Dec. 25 release of the movie as movie theatres reported that they were not willing to showcase the flick. However, Sony's lawyer Davi Boies told 'Meet the Press' Sunday that the studio will eventually release the movie.

"We cannot determine whether or not a movie will be played in movie theatres... when a threat came out from what was called the GOP at the time- threatening audiences who would go to the movie theaters, the movie theaters came to us one by one over the course of a very short period of time- We were completely surprised by it and announced that they would not carry the movie. At that point in time, we had no alternative but to not proceed with the theatrical release on the 25th of December," Sony CEO and Chairman Michael Lynton told CNN's Fareed Zakaria.