the figures used here and it's always hard to know about north korea is that north korea gets 90% of its oil, 47% of its foreign trade and 45-55% of its food from china. what's more essentially north korea's only border to the rest of the world, land border, is with china. there's a tiny sliver will it joins russia. north korea needs that border for legitimate trade and smuggling. as far as the south koreans are concerned the chinese have a lot of leverage but they're not willing to use it. there are a lot of theories here as to why the most prevalent theory is the south koreans believe that the chinese are afraid that if north korea is so fridge ill, if they put too much pressure on it and there's any instability that will spill over into china. what's more is that in fact if there is a collapse up there that south korea will rush in and have a unified korean peninsula that is is democratic and a market economy right on china's borders. the national security advisors said to me late last week china values today's peace and stability more than they value tomorrow's. in other words th

the two koreas will be reunited. china would be a lot better off from its own perspective to support reunification, and the expanded trade relations it will inevitably enjoy with a reunited korea. i think the chinese leadership is divided. i think the older generation still remembers those glorious days when the communist parties of china and north korea were as close as lips and teeth, as they used to say. good luck with that. i think the younger generation of chinese leaders, and by that i mean people in their 60's, take a different view of north korea. they see it as the baggage said it is. they see the-effected is having on stability in northeast asia -- the negative effect it is having on stability in northeast asia and china themselves. you do not move china on this issue easily or quickly. it takes, i think, extended dialogue and pressure, and we're not doing that. that is the direction i would move in. >> i hope to see ronyon 2012. having said that, i want to get your thoughts on turkey. also, get your though

dai said south korea should not doubt north korea's goodwill. the north has made several offers for dialogue with the south this month, including working-level intergovernmental talks. south korea remains cautious about the invitations. dai also told the japanese lawmakers that china has been asking north korea to take a calm and thoughtful approach to the current situation. china's state counselor traveled to north korea last month and met the country's leader, kim jong il. >>> foreign capital has been pouring into china since the united states announced further monetary easing last fall. money is flowing into inland chi china as well as shanghai and other coastal cities. but the investment boom is raising concerns about inflation. >> reporter: subways, shopping malls, and other real estate projects are under construction in the city of xian in china's's inland province of xanxi. xan xiong owns a real estate company in xian. he launched his business eight years ago. the firm has grown rapidly thanks to china's property boom. last year the compa

actually, only one and that's korea. and if you look at korea very closely, you see the that koreans did this through indigenous innovation. so china is copying a model of another country, the only one they've been able to find and the question is is this consistent with the rules of the game. >> brown: well, myron brilliant, everybody is saying we need to be more proactive or watch the rules of the game here. how... what specifically should the obama administration do? how hard do they push? do they... we start to set our own barriers, for example? >> well, no, i don't think the answer is to erect protectionist barriers. one, we need to ensure we have our competitiveness agenda in place. that's investing in education. it's making sure we have a pro bust trade agenda. passing free trade agreements. it's making sure we invest in infrastructure and r&d. one part of the solution is that we work domestically to have the right policies in place. with respect to china in particular, i think we need to continue to press the chi

korea, north korean attack is not the same republic of korea that north korea had known before. the culture of impugnity has come to an end. >> warner: president li put the military on high alert and announced new rules of engagement. in late december the military staged massive land and sea live fire exercises, defying the north's threat to retaliate. there was no response from the north. and he says that was wise on their part. >> why don't we let north korea realize, you know, the consequences when... if and when they perpetrate another attack on us. i think they will certainly regret it. >> warner: this heightened tension between north and south has implications for the 28,500 u.s. troops that remain in korea to help maintain the armistice. four star u.s. general walter sharp, who would command combined korean and u.s. forces if full scale war broke out, is mindful of the delicate line each side has to walk between reaction and overreaction. >> what we see is a challenging north korean threat that is evolving and is focusing now on asmetry cal type of attacks and provocation

. >>> south korea has made a counter proposal to north korea for talks after rejecting the talks for dialogue. it could the talks would focus on yeonpyeong island. they call for holding a talk on february 21st. they made the announcement on monday and dismissed the north's offer and called to offer propaganda to present itself as a peaceful nation and a tactic to divide south korean society. they called to discuss the north's responsibility for sinking a south korean naval ship and attacking yeonpyeong island. south korea also said it needs to confirm that the north is sincere about scrapping its nuclear program. >>> meanwhile, north korea responded positively to recent remarks by the japanese foreign minister. it may be looking for ways to reopen direct talks with japan. at a news conference last tuesday, seiji maehara said it is important to build direct talks. he said it would be a top priority for japan this year. he also expressed his intention to carefully handle china's proposal for talks with the north. north korea weekend maehara's remark as a positive step in a commentary p

in china i'm stared at, in south korea i'm stared at, not north korea. they don't make eye contact. >> were you relieved when you got out? >> yes. always. but it's not nearly as scary as you might think because once you get a proper visa as opposed to walking across the river, you're chaperoned every moment. and, you know, i knew not to say anything that would get me in trouble or the people who were guiding me. >> how long have you been working on "nothing to envy"? >> it's embarrassing to say, but it was about seven years. i started intir viewing -- i started interviewing north koreans in, i guess, 2001, and i think because i couldn't get into north korea i became obsessed. as journalists, we're very simplistic creatures. if you tell us you can't go some place, you want to go. kind of like the cat and the string. so i was really obsessed about what life was like. and, you know, i imagined it was a little bit like "1984" or "brave new world," and, in fact, it is. >> you've already won the samuel johnson prize for "nothing

forces in korea. lockett come back to washington to say to the president a few months prior to the close call that we could win a war with north korea at at that the cost would be 1,000,001,000,000,000,000. president clinton said, meaning what? he said 1 million south korean lives and a trillion dollars from their economy because of the destruction and the disruption. so those were the stakes and they were pretty terrible stakes. but clinton had kind of backed himself into a corner. it was going to be a series of ratcheted up restrictions on north korea and north korea's to turn seoul in south korea to a sea of flames. you probably remember that phrase. both sides were kind of ratcheting up into a conflict that neither side seemed to have a way to pull back from. it was just at that point that former president jimmy carter decided he had better step in and he took advantage of the fact that for the previous three years he had an invitation from the north koreans every year to come to their country, an

i've been to north korea quite a few times but you can't take anybody in north korea.you can't have any on contact. is the most were repression of regime in the world. when you work in north korea, you have a minder in your mind or has a minder to make sure you don't talk to anybody. but i found arth koreans actually to be quite talkative when i got out of the country, and that really painstakingly pieced together their stories, which in my mind were 1984 come true. >> these north koreans that he spoke with, did they escape from north korea? were they visiting south korea? why were they out of the country? >> everybody has to escape. north koreans basically live in a large prison. they are not allowed out of their country unless they are very very elite. these are people who largely, when they were starting to cross the rivers of the border of china and tried to make new lives for themselves, and the funny thing is when they were in north korea although they were starving, they had this topic and of that they lived in the best country in the world. we have nothing to e

nothing to envoy in north korea. how did you get access to north korea? >> i spent seven years interviewing north koreans, not in north korea, but in south korea. i've been to north korea several times, but you can't speak to anybody there. you can't even make eye contact with them to say this is the worst repressive regime in the world. actually have a case when you work in north korea, you have a minder, and your minder has a minder to make sure you don't talk to anybody. i found north koreans to be talkative when they got out of the country. i pain stakingly pieced together their stories which in my life was 1984 coming true. >> these north koreans you spoke with, did they escape north korea or visiting? >> everybody has to escape. north koreans basically live in a large prison. they are not allowed out of the country unless they are very, very elite. these are people who largely when they were starving to death crossed the river that borders china, and you know, tried to make new lives for themselves, and you know, the funny thing is when they were in

is in violation of north korea's commitments and international obligations. >> hu said the u.s. and china share common interests and responsibilities on a wide range of international issues, but he added that there's still a gap between their positions, especially on human rights. [ speaking foreign language ] >> the two leaders issued a joint statement wednesday. the united states and china have agreed on mutual vice presidential visits to promote bilateral ties and establish a strong partnership. vice president joe biden will visit china this yearich xi jin reciprocate. the two countries expressed concerns about north korean's claimed uranium-enrichment program. >>> the u.s. and china agreed on export deals of $45 billion. they include children's purchase of 200 boeing aircraft in the next three years. the two sides signed 70 contracts in which u.s. companies would export auto parts, agricultural products, machinery and chemicals. they also exchanged a memorandum calling for a closer business partnerships to build a high speed railway in the u.s. it also encouraging joint deve

discussions on north korea from outside the council. japan has held the rotating presidency of the council twice since january 2009. in april, then foreign minister katsuya okada attended the council and led the negotiations to issue a president's statement on peace building in post conflict countries. japan also served as liaison between the security council and south korea over north korean issues. but japan has failed to gain support for its calls for the council to explicitly condemn north korea on two occasions. one was over the sinking of a south korean war ship in march, allegedly by the north. and another was north korea's artillery attack on a south korean island in november. japanese officials are voicing concerns about being out of the council -- security council from the new year. they say it will now be difficult to obtain information on the moves of the various u.n. member nations. >>> an avalanche in the mountains of western japan killed four ski resort workers on friday. it happened at around 1:00 p.m. in tottori prefect

and north, north korea nearly overran south korea. there was a perimeter, and basically the south was really reduced to this tiny perimeter at the tip of south korea. and at any point it looked like the dam was going to break, and the north was going to overrun the south. basically, truman appointed one of the legends of the pacific, general macarthur, to stem the tide. originally, the 23rd division was thrown in, and these guys were equipped with bazookas that had hardly any effect at all, and it was a delaying game. they were trading, you know, time for space. and the answer came in the form of the marine corps. first marine, provision alma lean brigade was sent over, and they acted as a fire brigade to plug the gaps. but it was in the summer of 1950 that george company, which is the focus of this book, was formed. and it's not, it's a story about men that had really no training at all in many most cases. as well as some veterans of world war ii. but many of the men were reservists, and it's not like the reservists of today where pe

>> i spent about seven years interviewing north korea, not in north korea, but in south korea and around the chinese border. i've been there quite a few times but you can't speak to anybody in north korea, you can't even make eye contact with them to see this is the most repressive regime in an actual case where we can use superlative when you work in north korea you have in mind your and your mind has a minder to make sure you don't talk to anybody but i found north koreans to be quite talkative when they got out of the country and i really just painstakingly pieced together their stories, which in my mind were 1984 come true. >> these north koreans that you spoke to come to the escape from north korea? with a visiting south korea? why were they out? >> brigety hinchey scaap. north koreans basically live in a large prison. they are not allowed all of the country unless they are very elite. these are people who largely when they were starving crossed the rivers that border china and try to make new lives for themselves. the funny thing is when they were in north korea also they were star

they had been shipped out overseas to korea. the thing that i'll never forget is that the -- some of my classmates at fort lewis, at the engineering school, i never saw again after that graduation. many of them were shipped to korea never to return. i was among the lucky ones. and so i dedicated myself because of that military experience to the question of force and diplomacy in our foreign policy activities. it's my deepest belief as martin luther king junior said, jobs, justice and peace, if you had to sum up the career and life and legacy of the one person that influenced me with all due respect to other influences more than any other one person i ever met, known and worked with. and the question is, how do you get the peace? and it seems more clear to me that you cannot get the peace without a full employment, plan without justice, which includes economic and political justice and then you can inch toward peace. funny in these several thousand years, we are still struggling toward that objective. and so, it can be said that

in terms of north korea, the government of south korea now takes a more realistic view of north korea that its two predecessors did. i think they understand better than we do that the real issue here in the short-term is the regime transition in north korea. it -- this is not like england were the eldest son -- when queen elizabeth pilot goes to work reward, there is no doubt prince charles will get to be king. since he was born eight days before i was, i know exactly how old he is and how long he has been waiting to be king. [laughter] he will be caned and nobody will overthrow him. that is not true for kim jong un. while there is a period of risk there for south korea, japan, and the united states, it is also a period of opportunity. net regime in north korea is very fragile. it could come down easily. we ought to be talking to china to avoid problems if that happens because i think if there was real and stability in north korea, we and the south would go in to try to secure the nuclear weapons and restrict refugee flows. we do not want to stumble into something as a result of not h

is south korea on edge. is the country still living in the shadow of that very provocative north korean assault? >> warner: ray, i would say that people's anxiety level has calmed a little bit compared it to what it was described to be like last november and december. but there's a new mood here, a new soberness about the threat from the north. 50 south koreans total were killed last year in two attacks by the north. the other one on a warship. and the ones killed in november were the first civilians sort of deliberately targeted. and so if you talk to south korean people as we have in the streets and in shops here, they have a new appreciation for the seriousness of the threat from the north. and if you know, the dmz and the border with the north is just 30 miles up the road from the downtown behind me. >> suarez: in the past it appeared the north korean unpredictability really has kind of worked for the country while south korea has tried to build down tensions between the two countries. but it sounds like

korea as well. some years ago on an intelligence visit. while i had seen the overhead picture, the contrast only grows greater overtime. what we saw on the ground there was the same thing in the faces of the people in seoul and in other places there, the vitality, the sparkle, the industry, the children -- it is just so alive. the capital of north korea, there was a poverty of spirit. there was a dullness, a propaganda machine at work. a part of it was that in our hotel room, what we saw there were films, we call them newsreel's when we were kids, of american soldiers in north korea. that is what they showed the north korean people over and over again, americans in north korea. that was their excuse for not having enough food for the people because the americans could be coming anytime, so we had to keep the food for the military, so the people were starving. people were starving. mitch mcconnell reference the difference between freedom and communism, and it is very clear there, as clear as that ove

bosworth visited south korea and china before flying to japan. north korea offered to allow u.n. nuclear inspectors into its uranium enrichment facility and recently called for unconditional talks with south korea at an early date. sasae and bosworth discussed the north's strategy and exchanged views on china's proposal to hold meetings of the six-party talks on the north's nuclear program. but they agreed that they will continue to urge north korea to take concrete action toward dismantling its nuclear facilities as a precondition for resuming talks. two officials confirmed that japan, the united states and south korea will continue to coordinate their positions on north korea. >>> the chinese government says president hu jintao will visit the united states for four days starting the 18th of this month. it will be the president's first visit to the u.s. in five years. the chinese foreign ministry announced details of the trip on friday. it says hu will meet u.s. president barack obama in washington on the 19th. china views the trip as one of its most important diplomatic events

and the acknowledgment that there was a responsibility and north korea and that north korea was a problem. and again, the statements on intellectual property, i mean when microsoft reports that one out of ten microsoft products that ends up in china in use is paid for, nine out of ten are-- you know, that's really international banditry on their part and continues. but you know, i think the president handled himself well. he does that very well. i don't know -- >> what did you think. >> i was most impressed by the level of self-criticism by the obama administration and correction. and that's really the story on economics but also the story on china policy. i think there is a wide spread recognition that they came into power saying we've gotten to gauge china. we will open up to them. we will talk to them and this was perceived as weakness by the chinese and they began to walk over the obama administration. and they also began to think this openness was a sign that americans knew their power was in decline and were being more gentle and therefore it was necessary to shift, do some openness

because the bulk of north korea's population in industry is in the northern part of north korea, and were you to have a collapse of the state, you could have millions of north korean refugees flooding across the river into china itself, and china is, you know, is very much afraid of that, so why it wants a regime that's more tolerable and more like china itself more than the kind of stalinist monstrosity, at the same time, china is very fearful of a collapse, so china is upholding the status quo in north korea, but my opinion is a regime like this is ultimately not viable in the world we live in today and that were the north korea regime were to unravel suddenly, you could have the mother of all humanitarian interventions because on one day the north korean people would be the semistarving north korean people with a population comparable to that of iraq is the responsibility of the north korean regime. the next day it could be the responsibility of the international community which in effect means the responsibility of the u.s. mill taser, -- mail military, the south korean military,

envoy to the six-party talks on north korea sung kim will join the meetings in seoul and beijing. the united states, japan and south korea want the north to take concrete action toward denuclearization as a precondition for resuming the six-party talks. the u.s. delegates are expected to urge china to press north korea towards that end using the influence it has as an ally. >>> in pakistan, the coalition government has apparently collapsed. its second largest party says it will leave the ruling coalition. this could deprive the government of its majority in parliament. the mutahida qaumi movement announced on sunday it will withdraw from the governing alliance. it cited dissatisfaction with prime minister yusuf raza gilani. economic policies and security measures. the coalition government led by the pakistan people's party would fall short of a majority in the lower house. the prime minister denied speculation that he may dissolve parliament. he told reporters the government will remain in tact and will not fall from the defaction. gilani will likely enter into talks with oppositi

bosworth visited south korea and china before flying to japan. north korea offered to allow u.n. nuclear inspectors into its uranium enrichment facility and recently called for unconditional talks with south korea at an early date. sasae and bosworth discussed the north's strategy and exchanged views on china's proposal to hold meetings of the six-party talks on the north's nuclear program. but they agreed that they will continue to urge north korea to take concrete action toward dismantling its nuclear facilities as a precondition for resuming talks. two officials confirmed that japan, the united states and south korea will continue to coordinate their positions on north korea. >>> the chinese government says president hu jintao will visit the united states for four days starting the 18th of this month. it will be the president's first visit to the u.s. in five years. the chinese foreign ministry announced details of the trip on friday. it says hu will meet u.s. president barack obama in washington on the 19th. china views the trip as one of its most important diplomatic events

and civilians on the ships and brought them to south korea. the reason why they hated the chinese and the north koreans is because they were normal people. they did not want war. they did not know what it was all about but they knew the north koreans and chinese were kicking them out of their houses, killing the livestock, teeeighteen their food, whenever few they had and they wanted out. we brought them out and the rest is history again but people don't talk about the korean war. it is the forgotten war. and that is a sad thing about it the greatest battle ever fought, that i have ever read about, there happen other battles. of the would seem a. the alamo. wake island. but these places either surrendered or were killed or outnumbered the enemy but we were outnumbered in most cases i could never understand why the history books would not mention this. i'm sure some of this you have never heard before. but pat brought to this out in the book and i want to thank him again. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, bob. the greatest problem a

they don't control north korea. they have a lot of influence over it. >> the same could be said with their very different but also dangerous relationship with iran. >> iran is much further away and influence in iran is much lower than it is in a place like north korea. their fundamental and north korea. it is right on their border. >> but they are getting with a nuclear power and a nuclear wannabe. wannabe. >> exactly. >> the chinese are pretty farsighted. do they see this as a threat not just to us but themselves? >> they see the mark near-term threat. it's not so much that you political -- the geopolitical out of south korea been on the border of china, it's the basic lady of instability. >> talk about the economic instability? >> absolutely. >> yield back the remaining four seconds. >> thank you very much, mr. ackerman. i recognize mr. burton. >> thank you, madam chairman. or chair. thank you for -- >> prefer as your excellency. [laughter] >> thank you for having this hearing. i'm going to ask a couple of questio

they don't control north korea. they have a lot of influence over it, but this is -- >> the same can be said with their very different, but also difference relationship with iran. >> iran is much further away, and their influence in iran isr much lower than in a place liken north korea. they're fundamental in north korea.a it's right on their border, it's a very -- >> but they're dealing with a nuclear power and a nuclear wannabe. don't they see this as a threat not just to us, but themselves? >> it's not so much the geopolitical -- the geopolitical element of north korea being ont the border of china, it's the idea of instability. >> you're talking about economic instability. >> exactly. >> and they're threatened more by that than nuclear stability? >> i believe they are. >> thank you very much,our mr. acker match. i recognize mr. burton, chairman designate of the subcommittee on europe and eurasia. >> thank you, madam chairman. or chair. thank you -- >> referred to earlier as yourtn excellency, i think. [laughter]