 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today, we are going to discuss about North Korea's Intercontinental Missile Test. To discuss the issue, we have with us Prabhupur Kais, the editor-in-chief of NewsClick. So, Prabhir, North Korea has claimed that it has tested intercontinental missiles. What is the reach, I mean, in comparison to the test it had done a few months back, and what is the technology part of it? Well, first is, it is, if we look at the range now that this missile is capable of travelling, it seems that the claim of being an intercontinental ballistic missile is correct. Now, why are we saying it? Because it did not really travel that long distance. When you test such missiles, since you do not really want to send it over a long distance where you do not know where and whom it will hit. So, the attempt is to send it over a high trajectory. And so, it goes up and then comes down and falls relatively close to where your test site is. So, in this case, it fell in their, what is called the economic exclusion, exclusive economic zone of Japan, but it was still way off the Japanese main coast. So, this, it appeared to have therefore travelled only a short distance, some few hundred kilometers. In this case, it is supposed to be about 733 kilometers, what is supposed to have travelled. But if you look, if you convert that to a normal trajectory, which is what you have when you want to travel the maximum distance, but this translates according to people who have done the calculation, it translates to something like 6700 kilometers. Now, this is really a very, very large range. And it is certainly way beyond what happened in the earlier test. So, you see a significant quantum jump, if you will, of the ability of North Korean missiles to travel a long distance, really way beyond what we thought was possible, say a year back. And all the papers and all the calculations show it can reach Alaska, it may not be able to reach what is called mainland United States, certainly conditional Alaska and lots of the islands of Hawaii, not the main islands of Hawaii, but lots of the islands of Hawaii. On this side, it can reach up to Australia, the northern coast of Australia, the northwestern coast of Australia to be accurate. So, this is really a large range, which means what we already knew from the last test itself, that places like Guam where the United States has a large military concentration, Okinawa and Japan, all of Japan and of course, South Korea is well within its range. So, we do see a qualitative change with this test of the North Korean missile capability. But more than that, the speed at which they are developing, it is not really out of bounds to think that they should be in a few, maybe a few months, maybe a year, maybe two years, they should have the missile capability of also delivering missiles to United States. Now, will that mean that they can reach a nuclear bomb to United States, attack US with cities with nuclear bombs? Open question, because that does mean control over miniaturization of the bomb, the re-entry of the missile and so on. They claim they have been testing re-entry, but it does mean that the North Korea's missile capability certainly proceeded much faster than a lot of the experts have believed, including, you know, possibly us. So, Praveen, what are the reasons that led to such frequent interval test things that is being done by North Korea? What are the reasons behind it? It's an interesting question, because I think what people don't understand, that North Korea was forced to militarize much more heavily, because of the felt of the United States using South Korea and its allies, every year used to hold military, what they called exercises, but it was really aggressive military exercises which had all the hallmark of a possible invasion. This also included landing on its beaches, for instance. These are all mimicked. This meant that the North Koreans had to militarize very heavily in order to meet relatively superior military forces of the United States, which had much better arms, mobility, missiles and so on. This, for North Korea, was important, because North Korea had been flattened in the Korean War. As we know, not only North Korea, even large parts of South Korea had been flattened, but the devastation in North Korea was very large. One out of five is the estimate people have of people who were killed, which means every family suffered losses. So, given that psyche of the North Koreans, given the fact that the United States had aggressive military exercises, right from 53 to today, this meant that they had the psyche of being always under threat, always under attack and therefore militarization. That is a very costly militarization, because maintaining land forces, all other arms and armaments means that you have to spend a lot of money. For them, particularly with the current leadership of North Korea, it appeared that going the nuclear weapon and the missile route is a cheaper option. Now, it is a much more dangerous option for the world. And I have been snow-wards that nuclear bombs are not something that we want to see. Therefore, I don't think this is something that the North Koreans have done. I welcome. But nevertheless, it remains a fact for North Korea, its question of their survival as far as they are concerned. And they do think that the United States, increasingly, George Bush had called it the evil part of the evil empires. Trump has been very aggressive about North Korea. So, given the kind of aggression, at least in words, if not in deeds that you see against North Korea, that is really the reason North Korea has taken this route. For them, instead of being a completely military state, for them to invest in missiles and nuclear weapons is not a more costly option. Actually, it's a cheaper option. So, probably what is geo-strategic significance of this entire testing vis-a-vis the relationship with South Korea, then US and South Korea relationship. And now, since it's reaching Australia, what's the significance of it? It's a very clear issue now that North Koreans are not going to back down unless they see some concessions being offered by United States and South Korea. They have said earlier, they had said earlier that we can scale this down or scale this back if you stop the military exercises. I do not know whether that offer still holds good because now they have reached a level where I don't think they can pull this back that easily. So, this is one part of it. It certainly makes the task of military engaging North Korea much more difficult. Is United States really going to attack a country which has nuclear weapons and this missile capability? Looking at the past, I don't really think it's a viable option. It was never a viable option, particularly because Japan is so close, South Korea is so close. South Korea's all, the capital, is only 50 kilometers from the border. So, it's not even, doesn't even require a missile range, long range artillery can attack and flatten so on. So, given this, I don't think the military option is really open for the United States. It has not been open for the United States for a long time. They have been provocative. They have also introduced a THAAD system which is basically anti-ballastic missile shields and those kind of shields are porous and they don't address the missile balance as the proponents seem to think. So, one part of it, I think it's increasingly more and more difficult for North Korea to be attacked and the time has come to actually accept this and the moving forward would be using China, using Russia to really start peace talks and say, well, will you scale it down and we will do the following. What till now has happened, including Trump, all the statements have been, you scale it down, we may give you some money, we may lift sanctions. Now, you impose sanctions and then you lift sanctions that cannot be considered something as a gift, but they actually present the lifting of sanctions as a gift. We saw that in the case of Iran as well. I think those kind of negotiations won't work. They'll really have to think about peace in Korean peninsula and for that, North Koreans did miss a trick because South Korea, the new president who has won, was in favor of reapproach Ma trying to talk to North Korea and so on. Maybe a little bit of gap, trying to engage South Korea, getting into peace talks for North Korea leadership might have been a better option than rushing in with more and more missile tests. So, I will fault them on tactics that they are doing perhaps and I guess isolation that North Koreans are in also breeds this kind of, shall we say, approach. But for the world, it's time not to think about either or. North Korea has to stop or else. I think the time has come for people to sit down and say, what needs to be done to take into consideration North Korea's concerns and what do we take into account. Thanks a lot, Ruby, for giving us this time and as these things proceed, we'll be coming back to your situation. Thank you for watching us. 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