North Korea Nuclear Threat; Trump White House.
KRISTIE LU STOUT, CNN NEWS STREAM SHOW HOST: I'm Kristie Lu Stout in Seoul. Welcome to this special edition of "News Stream." A fiery message from South Korea. Stimulates a strike on North Korea in retaliation to Pyongyang's latest nuclear test. North Korea blasts the move calling on Seoul to stop the military exercises or face being reduced to ashes. And as the crisis intensifies, one Korean war veteran shares his memories of the conflict in a deeply personal letter to Kim Jong-un. And we begin with the region on edge. The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog is calling North Korea a global threat, one with new dimensions and unpredictability. It comes after North Korea claimed it successfully detonated a hydrogen bomb and now South Korea says that there are signs the north is preparing for another missile launch. World leaders are united in their condemnation, but divided as to how to contain the threat. And with the U.S., South Korea, and their allies ramping up their military presence in the region, new tensions are emerging. Russia says it might increase its missiles in the pacific to balance the deployment of U.S. missile defense systems in South Korea and Japan. And despite repeated threats from North Korea and despite the military response of Pyongyang's nuclear test, Seoul has long pushed for a diplomatic solution, but the U.S. president sees this as being too soft on North Korea. Now, combined that with recent tensions over trade, is there possible rift growing between the two allies? Paula Hancocks has more.</s>PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It started so well, a state visit in June, a dinner agreement on North Korea, then a slight bleep as U.S. President Donald Trump publicly chastised the South Korean leader for what he saw as an unfair trade deal. But North Korean missile launches brought back the alliance we are used to seeing, joint force, U.S. and South Korean military side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder. And now this on Sunday, a direct jab at the South Korean President Moon Jae-in's desire for more dialogue with the north. A tweet from President Trump that read, South Korea is finding as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing.</s>JOHN DELURY, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF CHINESE STUDIES, YONSEI UNIVERSITY: You can't really get a more toxic term than appeasement, and so to throw that at your ally, who apparently is saying to President Trump, look, dialogue needs to be part of the mix. At this moment, when North Korea has just tested a nuke, it's a real head spinner as to, you know, what the president thinks he gets out of that.</s>HANCOCKS (voice-over): Mr. Trump spoke to Japan's Leader Shinzo Abe twice in 24 hours over North Korea's actions, but is yet to pick up the phone to call the South Korean president, leading some in Seoul to ask, what happened? This man says we're the ones dealing with this directly. It's fine to talk to Abe, but Trump should have talked to the South Korean president first. If there's war, it will be on this peninsula. This young woman says if the U.S. responds too strongly to North Korea, North Korea might choose an extreme response. I'd like to know what responsibility Mr. Trump would take if that happens. Walking the streets of Seoul, it doesn't look like a country technically at war. Tensions are not visible, but there is concern all the way up to the president that military confrontation with the north be avoided at all costs. Add to that President Trump's insistence of a free trade deal that South Korea thought was signed, sealed and delivered be renegotiated, confusion is rife.</s>HANCOCKS: One side that couldn't be happier about this perceived drift between the U.S. and South Korea, North Korea, a less unified response to its nuclear and missile tests only gives Pyongyang political success as well as its recent technical success. Paula Hancocks, CNN, Seoul.</s>LU STOUT: Here in Seoul, some have noticed that there has been no mention of any phone call between President Trump and President Moon, but the military chiefs of both nations spoke with each other after North Korea's nuclear test. China is responding to a tweet by U.S. President Donald Trump that says, the U.S. is considering stopping all trade with any country that does business with North Korea. Beijing calls any such actions unfair and unacceptable and says it's been working hard to peacefully resolve tension on the Korean peninsula. The Chinese president is hosting leaders of the BRICS nations for talks. Let's bring Andrew Stevens from the side of those talks in Xiamen. Andrew, we've been talking about this all day today. This must be dominating discussions in Xiamen. When the U.S. president threatens to stop all trade from any country doing business with North Korea, how did China, how did India respond to that?</s>ANDREW STEVENS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the main response was what you just read out there, China through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs saying it was unacceptable and unfair given the fact that China was going to</s>LU STOUT: Got it. So the BRICS nations altogether there at the conference in Xiamen calling for and pushing for dialogue as the way to manage the North Korea issue. I also wanted to get your thoughts on another tweet from Donald Trump while we have you, Andrew. Donald Trump saying, quote, North Korea is a rogue nation which has become a great threat and embarrassment to China which is trying to help, but with little success, unquote. Once again, Donald Trump puts the blame on China. What more can China, should China do?</s>STEVENS: Just on that embarrassment line, that's really -- there is a ring of truth there without a doubt, that Kim Jong-un ordered this nuclear test right as Xi Jinping was stepping on to the international stage as the host of this BRICS Summit. This is the third time that North Korea has done something similar when President Xi has stepped into the international spotlight and that has irritated Beijing intensely. What can China do? Well, there is no doubt that it holds the key to -- really the economic future of North Korea at the moment, if you like, and 90 percent of trade of North Korea goes to China. These are all statistics we have' been talking about for the past few days, that if China chose to, it could close off the oil supply, the energy supply, that would hurt. If China chose to, it could scale back on the textile products going between the two countries. And it could also target banks, Chinese banks, which are helping North Korea get money out into the international financial system. On the energy first, Kristie, that's the really big one. But the equation still remains in China that if you turn those oil taps off, you would destabilize Korea to the point where it could collapse. Again, we've heard this do many times, but China keeps repeating it, they are not prepared to see a collapsing North Korea on their border with the prospect of millions of refugees, with the prospects perhaps of the U.S. taking a bigger role and a unified Korea having the U.S. literally on their doorstep. So China has so far pushed back on any attempts to increase, particularly from Donald Trump, to increase the economic pressure. The United Nations Security Council meets as we know in the next few hours, sanctions are on the table. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has said this much, that he's got a package of much tougher sanctions. China would have to be involved in those. The question is, is their strategic thinking going to change because of this game-changing move by North Korea? Thermonuclear device by all accounts are capable of hitting the U.S. So, the ball is in China's court. China will say, it's the U.S. who has to talk, but China still has the keys to the North Korean economy. It can move. The question is, will it? And a lot of people here will say it's unlikely China is going to change its stance there, Kristie. It is going to go for this hard line particularly about something like oil as fundamental as energy supplies to North Korea.</s>LU STOUT: Yes. It would just cut too deeply, but we'll see what comes out of that U.N. Security Council emergency session which as you pointed out will be starting in just a couple hours from now. Andrew Stevens reporting live from Xiamen. Thank you. This latest provocation from the north comes nearly after Pyongyang fired a missile over Japan. Japan's prime minister called the nuclear test, quote, a grave and imminent threat. We get the latest now from Tokyo with Will Ripley who was reporting from Pyongyang only a few days ago. Will, we know that Prime Minister Abe and Donald Trump, they do enjoy a good personal relationship. They talk to each other on the phone. Mr. Abe says that Japan will take determined actions against North Korea. What does that mean? Do we know what shape that would take?</s>WILL RIPLEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, all we have to go by are the actions that we've seen so far, which is the United States and Japan pressuring their allies to step up enforcement of sanctions against North Korea and continue to try to pressure China, as Andrew was just talking about, because their other options are extremely limited. They can continue to show force in terms of bomber and fighter jet fly- overs. They can deploy military assets to the region, strategic military assets such as aircraft carriers, U.S. aircraft carriers, remember the "Carl Vinson" strike group was deployed off the Korean peninsula back in April after tensions were escalating there. But the bottom line is, their options truly do remain limited when it comes to reining in North Korea and of course we have just seen time and time again a defiant response from Pyongyang and its leader Kim Jong-un.</s>LU STOUT: And also reaction from the comments we heard, from the U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis, warning for a quote, massive military response, to North Korea after its nuclear test. Is that raising some concern there in Tokyo?</s>RIPLEY: People in Japan are certainly nervous to hear about any talk of a military response, but frankly the actions of North Korea are also making people nervous. So, it was just a week ago that people woke up to the sound of air raid sirens in Hokkaido, Japan's norther island, and received terrifying messages on their phone telling them that a North Korean missile was coming and they had to seek shelter at sturdy building. This is the first time that there is an entire generation of Japanese who are growing up with this kind of threat. Obviously this country still is deeply scarred by the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now, they are living with that fear revived. However, unlikely or perhaps likely it may be depending which analyst you are talking about, that there could be more bombs raining down on this country. I mean, a lot of North Korea's missile launches to date have been launched in the direction of Japan and have come down in the waters off of Japan. Now, there are indications that this new, these new preparations for missile launches in North Korea may send those missiles on a trajectory toward the Pacific Ocean. Whether that would be the Pacific Ocean off of Hokkaido as we saw last week or in a southerly direction toward the U.S. territory of Guam, that has yet to be seen.</s>LU STOUT: All right. CNN's Will Ripley reporting live for us from Tokyo. Thank you, Will. Our next guest played a key role in the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program. These negotiations stalled over a decade ago, and China and Russia, they want them revived. David Straub was also the head of the Korea desk at the U.S. State Department. He joins us now. Thank you for joining us here in the program.</s>DAVID STRAUB, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, KOREA PROGRAM: My pleasure.</s>LU STOUT: We were talking just then with our correspondent in Seoul and in Tokyo. On one hand, you have that close personal relationship between Prime Minister Abe and Donald Trump. They talked to each other on the phone after the latest nuclear test by the north. No phone call reported just yet between President Moon and President Trump. And then you have that tweet of criticism that Donald Trump leveled at the South Koreans for -- in his talk about appeasement. Where this -- is that a rift? Where does that leave Seoul?</s>STRAUB: Well, I wouldn't call it a rift yet, but I do think that there is a gap between the two presidents. And I must say President Moon is not faultless in this, but I think President Trump and the way he acts in general, it is an obstacle to closer U.S.-South Korea relations. In particular, his tweets are very undisciplined. They caused a great deal of confusion and they even caused fear in South Korea, that we might have a war here.</s>LU STOUT: There is a gap between these two presidents, the president of South Korea and the president of the United States. Also, the president of China and the United States. Donald trump continues to say China, you're not doing enough and even launching indirect threat, you know, saying that if you continue to do trade, we're not going to trade with you. That's certainly not helping things.</s>STRAUB: Yes. Well, on the one hand, I think China could do a great deal more. One thing that everybody talks about, which is real, which is China could begin to cut off the oil supply to North Korea. That is the only thing that I can think of that might in the short to midterm have a decisive effect. But the idea that we are going to cut off all trade with China much less all other countries in the world that have any trade with North Korea, this is bizarre. This is really not leadership, it's the opposite of leadership.</s>LU STOUT: When you get a trade threat from an ally, when you are being called out with the criticism on Twitter and yet you need to deal with President Trump when you have to manage the North Korean crisis, what is your advice for leaders of American allies in east Asia about what they need to do to manage this relationship?</s>STRAUB: The South Koreans I think are trying to deal with this by having people -- deal with the people directly under President Trump, for example, General McMaster and General Mattis and other people -- Secretary Tillerson, and then only deal with President Trump when they really have to. But even so, we still don't have this telephone call between President Trump and President Moon even after this test. Maybe it will happen tomorrow. So my advice would be to deal with the second tier as much as you can, but then you still have to deal with President Trump because he is the president he got the football and we just can't avoid him.</s>LU STOUT: We heard moments ago from our correspondent in Xiamen covering the BRICS conference that the BRICS nations there, assembled there, including of course Russia and China are calling for dialogue, that should be the way forward. Should it?</s>STRAUB: Well, eventually dialogue is something that I think U.S. government wants and is necessary.</s>LU STOUT: Yes.</s>STRAUB: But it has to be dialogue about things that are in American interest. Otherwise, it's not in the American interest by definition to sit down with the North Koreans. Currently, it's quite clear that the North Koreans hope that when dialogue between them and the United States eventually takes place, it's going to be something like, OK, you Americans, we're equal to you because we have nuclear weapons too and it's time for you to remove your military forces from South Korea, so that we can then deal with the South Koreans the way we want to.</s>LU STOUT: You have to create the right conditions before you sit down at the table gain and you did sit down at the table with North Koreans on the negotiating team about a decade ago. What was it like to negotiate with them? What's their negotiating style? Do they have a list of demands? Do they ask a lot of questions? What it's like?</s>STRAUB: I think the North Koreans are excellent negotiators in one way. They are very manipulative. They are very disciplined. They are very smart. They are very knowledgeable. In fact, I'm embarrassed to say it, they are much more knowledgeable about these issues than the American negotiators have tended to be. I don't think that they themselves really know what their top leadership is doing. I think they have a set of talking points and position papers. And I think they -- in a very disciplined way, they act on that basis. It's a very frustrating exercise dealing with the North Koreans.</s>LU STOUT: Yes. David Straub, really fascinating. Thank you for sharing your time with us and your analyses.</s>STRAUB: Thank you.</s>LU STOUT: Take care. All right. In the U.S., some 800,000 young undocumented immigrants could soon live under the fear of deportation. If President Trump decides to cancel an Obama era immigration program, that's what is going to happen. The call he's making to change the dreamer policy, that story is next, keep it here.