美国国家公共电台 NPR Tillerson Confirms North Korea Missile An ICBM, Calls For Global Action

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

North Korea now claims it can send a nuclear missile anywhere in the world.

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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: (Speaking Korean).

KELLY: That's the way North Koreans heard the news from an anchor on state TV. This is the latest of many times that the country tested a ballistic missile. This one flew nearly 40 minutes before landing in Japanese waters. And that timing 1 is important because it's one clue suggesting the range of the missile. A big question is whether North Korea has a missile that could strike the U.S. Another big question is whether North Korea can fit a nuclear weapon on board. NPR correspondent Elise Hu is on the line now from Seoul. Hey, Elise.

ELISE HU, BYLINE 2: Good morning.

KELLY: Good morning. Start with those big questions, if you would. How significant a milestone 3 is this?

HU: Well, it's really quite significant from a technological 4 and a political standpoint. North Korea has been working towards this goal of a missile that could potentially reach the United States for long before Kim Jong Un came to power. What we know is it flew about 600 miles in distance, but it reached an altitude of about 1,500 miles.

That means it flew higher than the International Space Station and above many satellites in orbit, then turned around and came down, falling into the waters near Japan into Japan's exclusive economic zone. And if you flatten 5 that trajectory 6 and fly that missile forward instead of up, that is what would put all of Alaska at risk.

KELLY: Well, we watch now to see how the U.S. might respond. President Trump 7 has weighed in on the situation on Twitter, not surprisingly. What'd he say?

HU: He said that he was hoping that maybe China would move on this threat or move on the nuclear possibility of North Korea. And it's unclear what move on means here. China's foreign ministry 8 has already condemned 9 the test. And we're going to see the usual rounds of condemnations and talk of taking strong measures. But President Trump hasn't offered any specifics beyond this heavy move against North Korea that he talked about...

KELLY: Well, I know from...

HU: ...In his tweet.

KELLY: I know from years of covering the North Korea situation from here in Washington that they're - it's often described as the land of bad policy options. If there were a good option, it would have been taken by now. Is there a sign, do you think, that the international community at some point is just going to have to accept North Korea as a nuclear power?

HU: Well, as you know, Mary Louise, we're going to hear a lot of debate about this in the coming days. An ICBM would put Japan, South Korea, the United States in a much tougher negotiating position. And a lot of analysts 10 have been saying North Korea has really reached a point where it's no longer realistic to go for that long-standing U.S. goal of denuclearizing North Korea, that instead the conversation should be about getting North Korea to a freeze to stop it from advancing its capabilities 11.

I spoke 12 with Melissa Hanham, a researcher with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. She says given this difficult spot, it's time for efforts to really engage North Korea diplomatically.

MELISSA HANHAM: We need to have really serious conversations amongst ourselves and with allies about what we're willing to trade because so far there has been no price that was worth paying to stop their program.

HU: And time is tight. This is a tough, tough problem for the international community.

KELLY: OK. That's NPR's Elise Hu updating us on this latest test - missile test by North Korea. Elise, thank you.

HU: You bet.