Malaysian police have determined that the lethal nerve agent VX was used, adding to mounting evidence that the North was behind the killing. VX is a chemical agent listed as a weapon of mass destruction by the United Nations and its use is banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Eight North Koreans have been named as suspects, but the North has denied its involvement.

On Friday night, the North‘s Foreign Ministry said the U.S.

move to designate the country as a terror sponsor shows a hostile attitude towards it, claiming that the country has already clarified its principled stand of opposing all forms of terrorism and has acted in line with that.

“No matter how the U.S. again calls the DPRK as a ’sponsor of terrorism‘ in line with its standard and interests, the latter will never be a ’sponsor of terrorism,‘” the ministry said in an English-language statement carried by its official news agency, KCNA.

“The U.S. will keenly realize how dearly it has to pay for its groundless accusations against the dignified DPRK,” it said.

North Korea was put on the U.S. terrorism sponsor list for its

1987 midair bombing of a Korean Airlines 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. (Yonhap)