China, as we all know, the most important trading partner with north korea. the strongest ally. again, violations of the sanctions by china has riled the united states and the international community. let s see. shepard: with china you have to watch what they do while listening to what they said. let s go to gordon chang, author of nuclear show down. will they do it is the question. only if the trump administration forces them to comply with u.n. sanctions, this is really been the story of china. when sanctions are put in place by the u.n., the chinese make a big show of complying. they ll issue these pronouncements and actually do something for a couple months. when the united states isn t paying attention, they do back to doing the old way of doing things, which is supporting north korea. this will be the same thing unless the administration makes it clear to the chinese they can t get away with it. on december 28, you had that tweet from president trump saying look, the chines
And children to south korea given the provocation of north korea. so i want them to stop sending dependents and it s time to start moving american dependents out of south korea. shepard: nearly 30,000 troops are in south korea right now. gordon chang is here and author of nuclear show down. is senator graham right? should dependents be leaving south korea? yeah, it s a little premature. a lot of things we can do to disarm north korea peacefully. for instance, much more intensive sanctions, on north korea but their backers, china, russia and other countries. when you start evacuating american dependents, you spook a lot of people. you can create a situation where the dynamic just goes out of control, this is early to talk about this. shepard: the war games, military exercises, i ve been reporting on these at this time of year for as long as i can
Welcome back. still hard to believe that a north korean soldier was able to successfully cross the border and escape despite being shot multiple times and now he lives to be able to tell about it. what next? i want to bring in gordon chang, the author of the book nuclear show down. this defection is extraordinary and one caught on video tape. potentially what are the repercussions as a result of this happening if not just for his family if he has any living family members left in north korea but potentially repercussions for other people living inside that country? his family will be sent to some sort of concentration type camp. for north korea itself there are
That 200 workers died when tunnels collapsed during underground construction at the same test site. north korean officials call it all misinformation. more now on the president s trip to seoul and his offer to make a deal with north korea. gordon chang is here and author of nuclear show down , north korea takes on the world. a whole new tone today from the president. yeah, a more confident one. that is because president trump has been coached about this. he had a great trip in tokyo. that gives him a lot of momentum in seoul. i m sure he had difficult conversations with president moon in south korea. shepard: they were behind the scenes but they were very pleasant and cordial publicly. in public. that is important. i think the chinese will take their cue about how to treat trump from what happens in seoul. there s been a lot of difficulty shepard: the chinese will take their cue from seoul about
Would include a trip to the dmz, saying only that it would be a surprise. let s say that that means yes as we are told not to expect a trip to the dmz officially. speculation only. in washington many remain fearful as the president continues to escalate his rhetoric toward north korea and its leader kim jong-un, who he s called little rocket man. and what this may mean for any hope of a diplomatic solution. with us to talk about all of it tonight, vivian sa lamb ma, nbc news national political reporter who is out with a new piece today. and gored often chang is back with us. daily beast columnist and the author of nuclear show down, north korea takes on the world. an appropriate title. vivian, tell our viewers about your piece and the diplomat in particular who has people