U.S. Congress saw a bill this week calling for relisting North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism and levying further sanctions as tension rises over its growing nuclear and missile threats and unabated human rights abuses.

The resolution presented on Tuesday by Sen. Cory Gardner, chairman of the Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific and International Cybersecurity Policy, said Pyongyang poses a “serious threat” to the U.S. and its regional allies, citing the Kim Jong-un regime’s underwater ejection test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile.

The text urges the secretaries of state and treasury to “impose additional sanctions against the DPRK (North Korea), 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.”

It also warns against reopening any negotiations ― either bilaterally or within the six-nation denuclearization forum ― “without strict preconditions,” including the communist country’s commitment to halt the nuclear and missile development programs and military provocations, as well as “measurable and significant” improvement in its human rights record.

The move reflects Washington’s seemingly hardening line against the Kim regime, which could complicate Seoul’s efforts to foster cross-border rapprochement ahead of the 70th anniversary of the peninsula’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule.

Visiting Seoul on Monday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry struck a particularly harsh tone, lambasting the young ruler by name on virtually all fronts ― from weapons programs to personnel management to human rights ― and hinting at enforcing more sanctions or other means to ramp up pressure.

The U.S. House of Representatives also passed the defense budget bill for next year a few days ago after attaching a clause at the last minute that brands North Korea as a terrorism sponsor.

The North reached the State Department blacklist in 1988 for allegedly having orchestrated a mid-air bombing of a Korean Air jet the year before, killing all 115 people on board. It was removed the list in 2008 in exchange for progress in its denuclearization commitment made at the six-party talks including the destruction of a cooling tower at the Yongbyon nuclear complex.

In December, U.S. President Barack Obama said he would “review” whether to relist Pyongyang in the aftermath of a massive hack on Sony Pictures over a film centering on a plot to kill Kim.

“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.”

By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)