The announcement followed the FATF's annual meeting held in Spain last week.

A global anti-corruption watchdog has kept North Korea on its blacklist as Pyongyang pursues its nuclear and missile development programs, South Korea’s financial regulator said yesterday.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) at its annual meeting in Spain last week also called on its 37 member countries to tackle North Korea’s attempts to finance illicit weapons programs, Seoul’s Financial Services Commission said.

North Korea has been under United Nations sanctions due to its nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches.

UN experts have said North Korea evades sanctions using airlines, ships and the international financial system to buy banned items for its weapons program.

In a statement, the FATF said it “remains concerned by the DPRK's failure to address the significant deficiencies in its anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) regime and the serious threat this poses to the integrity of the international financial system."

DPRK is an acronym of North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The task force "calls on its members and urges all jurisdictions to apply effective counter-measures and targeted financial sanctions in accordance with applicable United Nations Security Council Resolutions to protect their financial sectors from money laundering, financing of terrorism and WMD proliferation financing (ML/FT/PF) risks emanating from the DPRK."