The United States on Monday put North Korea back on the state sponsor of terrorism list for the first time in nine years as Washington stepped up a global campaign of pressure on Pyongyang over its nuclear and missile programs.

"Today, the United States is designating North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism," President Donald Trump said at the start of a Cabinet meeting, an action that looks certain to spark anger from the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The designation -- which bans North Korea from exporting weapons and receiving economic assistance -- was the latest in a series of measures to impose "maximum pressure" and tightened sanctions on Pyongyang in concert with the international community to compel the country to engage in credible talks on its denuclearization.

The Treasury Department will announce additional sanctions on Pyongyang on Tuesday in what Trump said will be "the highest level of sanctions" against the defiant country.

"This designation will impose further sanctions and penalties on North Korea and related persons, and supports our maximum pressure campaign to isolate the murderous regime," Trump said.

Tensions have been running high since North Korea tested two intercontinental ballistic missiles in July and its sixth and most powerful nuclear test in September as part of an effort to develop nuclear-tipped ICBMs capable of hitting the mainland United States.

"In addition to threatening the world by nuclear devastation, North Korea has repeatedly supported acts of international terrorism, including assassinations on foreign soil," Trump said, in reference to the killing of Kim Jong Nam, the estranged half-brother of Kim Jong Un, with the nerve agent VX in Malaysia in February.

(UPI)

The president also referred to Otto Warmbier, a 22-year-old American university student who died in June soon after his release from North Korea in a coma following more than 17 months' imprisonment, and "the countless others so brutally affected by the North Korean oppression."

Later Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters that the North's use of chemical weapons was one factor behind the U.S. decision to relist Pyongyang as a terror state.

Tillerson warned international pressure over North Korea will only increase with the relisting of it as a state sponsor of terrorism.

"This is going to get worse until you're ready to come and talk," he said.

The top U.S. diplomat acknowledged that the designation is largely symbolic amid already tough sanctions on Pyongyang, but said that it would help close some remaining loopholes.

In the face of North Korea's repeated nuclear and ballistic missile tests in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, the U.S. House of Representatives in April passed a bill urging the State Department to apply the designation to North Korea once again.

The State Department lifted the designation on North Korea as a terror state in October 2008 under the administration of President George W. Bush as a result of progress in negotiations for North Korea's denuclearization.

At present, the State Department designates three other countries -- Iran, Sudan and Syria -- as state sponsors of terrorism.