美国国家公共电台 NPR Open Scientific Collaboration May Be Helping North Korea Cheat Nuclear Sanctions

 

NOEL KING, HOST:

North Korea is subject to some of the strictest sanctions on the planet. The Trump¹ administration is depending on that pressure to force North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, but new research shows the North is getting around sanctions. Through science, North Korea could be getting knowledge that the U.S. doesn't want it to have. NPR's Geoff Brumfiel explains.

GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE²: Kee Park is a neurosurgeon at Harvard Medical School, and he's one of the few Americans who's actually been to a scientific conference in North Korea.

KEE PARK: They have one every year in May. Medical doctors present their research.

BRUMFIEL: Park says North Korea's scientists are really clever, and their work helps the isolated³ nation get things it can't get otherwise. They've developed their own ultrasound machines, built a medical CT scanner from scratch.

PARK: They are now manufacturing their own artificial knee implants⁴, and they're implanting them on their own patients, which, to me, is remarkable⁵.

BRUMFIEL: The conferences are held in a big building in Pyongyang the North constructed a few years ago. A tribute to the nation's scientists, it's shaped like a giant atom.

PARK: And in the middle of the entire atrium is a massive missile (laughter).

BRUMFIEL: Actually, it's a rocket, not a missile - a model of the vehicle North Korea used to launch its first satellite. But that's kind of the problem - a rocket looks like a missile. It has a lot of the same parts and does almost exactly the same thing. It's what sanctions experts call a dual-use technology. Now, new research shared exclusively with NPR suggests North Korean scientists have been working on a lot of dual-use technology, and they've been doing it with researchers from other countries.

Josh Pollack is with the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and an author on this new research. It reviewed over 1,300 North Korean scientific papers and found a lot more than knee implants.

JOSH POLLACK: There are aspects of mathematical modeling that look particularly applicable to missiles and aircraft. There is engineering work that relates to cables that would be used in nuclear reactors⁶. That's pretty clearly dual-use. And my personal favorite is automotive research.

BRUMFIEL: Pollack pulls up one of the papers, a collaboration⁷ between a North Korean scientist and Chinese researchers. The title sounds fairly innocent.

POLLACK: "Active Steering⁸ Control Strategy For Articulated Vehicles."

BRUMFIEL: As Pollack explains, this paper is basically describing a technology used in very heavy trucks, trucks that can go off-road, for logging operations, say, or for something else.

POLLACK: It's nice to have a truck that can carry large missiles and can go off-road and hide.

BRUMFIEL: In fact, Pollack has seen trucks with active steering control like what's in the paper.

(SOUNDBITE OF NORTH KOREAN MILITARY PARADE)

BRUMFIEL: In North Korean military parades, these 16-wheeled trucks are carrying huge intercontinental ballistic missiles, the very missiles the U.S. is insisting the North must give up. Now, these trucks were imported illegally before China caught and stopped shipments. This paper and several others like it indicate that if the North can't import the trucks themselves, then they will obtain the technology to build them.

POLLACK: This is, in part, how the North Koreans go about beating sanctions.

BRUMFIEL: Pollack and his colleagues say, of those 1,300 papers, most are collaborations with Chinese scientists. About half, they believe, could have dual-use applications, and 100 or so are, quote, "of concern," meaning they need a close look.

ELIZABETH ROSENBERG: It does certainly appear that, in fact, some of this joint⁹ scholarly activity should not have been done.

BRUMFIEL: Elizabeth Rosenberg is with the Center for a New American Security and a former Treasury¹⁰ official who helped oversee¹¹ North Korean sanctions under the Obama administration. She says that sanctions largely focus on money and materials, not knowledge. Does it matter now that the North has nuclear weapons?

ROSENBERG: It absolutely still matters.

BRUMFIEL: That's because maintaining and upgrading the missiles and nukes is done by people.

ROSENBERG: You need an array of different kind of engineers and scientists and materials experts.

BRUMFIEL: And they are the ones who these research collaborations are benefiting. Fixing the situation will not be simple. Kee Park, the neurosurgeon who's been to North Korea, warns there's a lot of scientific research going on there that's legit, and some of it looks like it could be dual-use. Say researchers want to study a disease, that disease could also be useful as a biological weapon. So...

PARK: Would you then say to North Koreans and the Chinese, you cannot do research on things that kill their people, you know, infections?

BRUMFIEL: Sanctions are designed to target technologies the international community doesn't want North Korea to have. The problem is that the knowledge going into those technologies is often a lot more fuzzy. Geoff Brumfiel, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF BREAK OF REALITY'S "OTHER WORLDS")

1 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 isolated   

adj.与世隔绝的

参考例句：

• His bad behaviour was just an isolated incident. 他的不良行为只是个别事件。
• Patients with the disease should be isolated. 这种病的患者应予以隔离。

4 implants   

n.（植入身体中的）移植物( implant的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Hormone implants are used as growth boosters. 激素植入物被用作生长辅助剂。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Perhaps the most far-reaching project is an initiative called Living Implants From Engineering (LIFE). 也许最具深远意义的项目，是刚刚启动的建造活体移植工程 (LIFE)。 来自英汉非文学 - 生命科学 - 医学的第四次革命

5 remarkable   

adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的

参考例句：

• She has made remarkable headway in her writing skills.她在写作技巧方面有了长足进步。
• These cars are remarkable for the quietness of their engines.这些汽车因发动机没有噪音而不同凡响。

6 reactors   

起反应的人( reactor的名词复数 )； 反应装置； 原子炉； 核反应堆

参考例句：

• The TMI nuclear facility has two reactors. 三哩岛核设施有两个反应堆。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法
• The earliest production reactors necessarily used normal uranium as fuel. 最早为生产用的反应堆，必须使用普通铀作为燃料。

7 collaboration   

n.合作，协作；勾结

参考例句：

• The two companies are working in close collaboration each other.这两家公司密切合作。
• He was shot for collaboration with the enemy.他因通敌而被枪毙了。

8 steering   

n.操舵装置

参考例句：

• He beat his hands on the steering wheel in frustration. 他沮丧地用手打了几下方向盘。
• Steering according to the wind, he also framed his words more amicably. 他真会看风使舵，口吻也马上变得温和了。

9 joint   

adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合

参考例句：

• I had a bad fall,which put my shoulder out of joint.我重重地摔了一跤，肩膀脫臼了。
• We wrote a letter in joint names.我们联名写了封信。

10 treasury   

n.宝库；国库，金库；文库

参考例句：

• The Treasury was opposed in principle to the proposals.财政部原则上反对这些提案。
• This book is a treasury of useful information.这本书是有价值的信息宝库。

11 oversee   

vt.监督，管理

参考例句：

• Soldiers oversee the food handouts.士兵们看管着救济食品。
• Use a surveyor or architect to oversee and inspect the different stages of the work.请一位房产检视员或建筑师来监督并检查不同阶段的工作。