Americans are afraid of war with North Korea, even though the United States probably wouldn’t be the first target if North Korea were to attack.

South Korea is a different story.

Seoul’s 25.6 million residents are in direct firing range of thousands of pieces of North Korean artillery already lined up along the border. And around 70 percent of North Korea’s ground forces are within 90 miles of the border, ready to move south at a moment’s notice. One war game convened by the Atlantic magazine back in 2005 predicted that a North Korean attack would kill 100,000 people in Seoul in the first few days alone. 

But unlike in the US, few in South Korea seem panicked over the possibility of an impending war with North Korea. Instead, they are unfazed. The South Korean government even said on Thursday that it has “no sense of urgency” about North Korea.

So what gives? Are South Koreans just braver than Americans? Or have they simply gotten so used to living under the threat of annihilation that they’ve become numb to it?

To find out, I called Haeryun Kang, the managing editor of Korea Exposé, an English-language magazine and website based in Seoul. Kang told me that it all comes down to South Korea’s complicated, and contradictory, relationship with the North.

“In South Korea, it’s deeply personal, and it’s deeply complex. You don’t encounter North Korea just as a foreign country. It’s supposed to be your brother, your family, that one day you’re supposed to reunite with,” she said. “This kind of familial attachment coexists simultaneously with this aversion to North Korea because it’s a military threat.”

What follows is a transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for clarity and length.

Lindsay Maizland

Do people in South Korea care about the rising tensions between North Korea and the US? Are people worried about this?

Haeryun Kang

That’s actually a pretty difficult question. If I can speak for myself, I care because I’m a journalist. I have to know this stuff. Everyone around me cares, so I’m kind of in this bubble.

When you go out to the larger public, you see that life goes on as usual and a lot of people are pretty unfazed by what is going on. There’s a certain level of fear about what’s going on, if this or that were to happen, but on the whole, there’s not a hugely palpable sense of fear. Certainly not as much as what I encounter when I go abroad.

People abroad ask me, “What do you think about North Korea? What do you think about Kim Jong Un? Do you think he’s crazy?” People certainly don’t have that level of interest here.

Lindsay Maizland

The article you wrote for the Guardian earlier this week was titled “In South Korea we’re scared but we’ve normalized the fear.” Can you explain what that means?

Haeryun Kang

I guess the headline for the article is a little bit misleading. That’s not necessarily what I intended to say. It’s not normalized fear. What I mean to say is normalized indifference. There’s years and years of indifference, of not really talking about North Korea that much and not showing too much interest.

And behind this normalization of indifference is fear — fear about North Korea as this malicious other, fear that people are going to judge you if you show too much interest.

So there’s stigma and ignorance and all these complicated feelings behind this indifference. The way South Koreans experience the idea of North Korea is extremely different from the way everyone else experiences it, for example, in the US.

Lindsay Maizland

What’s the difference?

Haeryun Kang

For people in the US, you have the luxury of distance. North Korea is a foreign country. It’s some place exotic and mysterious and even sensational. It’s something that people can joke about and also have heated discussions about.

But in South Korea, it’s deeply personal, and it’s deeply complex. You don’t encounter North Korea just as a foreign country. It’s supposed to be your brother, your family, that one day you’re supposed to reunite with.

I mentioned in the article that a majority of South Koreans support [the reunification of North and South Korea]. They support unification to different degrees, but there aren’t a lot of South Koreans who say, “I never want reunification.”

But this kind of familial attachment coexists simultaneously with this aversion to North Korea because it’s a military threat.

Lindsay Maizland

I’ve been getting texts from American friends asking me if they should be afraid of a North Korean attack. And these are people who usually aren’t that concerned about these types of issues. So it’s interesting to me that, at least in the US, there’s this heightened interest and fear. And then to hear that in South Korea, where it’s actually more of a possibility that something could happen, there’s not this sense of fear.

Haeryun Kang

I think the exposure to the threats and the proximity of it really affects it too. A lot of people really don’t care. And it’s partly because of this fear, but also because they’ve been exposed to it for so long.

Oftentimes you hear people say, “They do this all the time. They’re not going to do anything. I’ve seen this before.” But actually if you look at the statistics, that’s not quite true. This is pretty new what Kim Jong Un is doing. And the frequency with which he’s conducting these missile tests is much more intense than his predecessors combined.

Lindsay Maizland

Would you say that you’re personally concerned then?

Haeryun Kang

I think if I really think about it, I’m a little concerned. But it’s also in the sense that I’m concerned about how easily accessible nuclear weapons are increasingly in this world. And it’s not just North Korea. It’s the United States, it’s Russia, it’s all these different countries.

There’s another layer of hypocrisy in the way we report about North Korea. Like, the United States owns nuclear weapons, but why is North Korea in the axis of evil that doesn’t get to because it’s supposed to be the less rational one? I’m just generally afraid of nuclear weapons in general. I’m just as afraid of Trump owning nuclear weapons as Kim Jong Un owning one.

It’s very unpredictable. But also, we write about growing global uncertainty all the time. When has that not been the case in the world? It’s just that now, the possible consequences are much more catastrophic.

Lindsay Maizland

So after Trump made that statement warning North Korea that “they will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen” if they keep threatening the US, what reaction did you see among people or talking with friends?

Haeryun Kang

I mean, it’s mixed. The reactions really depended on what kind of North Korean policy you favor. The hardliners, it matches their rhetoric of being tough against North Korea. So you saw a lot of people in the older generation supporting Trump’s rhetoric.

But there were a lot of people who were alarmed because it seemed careless. And there were as many people, probably a lot more people, who just didn’t care. But I guess that’s what happens in world affairs. The majority of people actually just go on with their lives. That’s the same in any country.

Lindsay Maizland

Is it generational?

Haeryun Kang

Definitely, definitely. I was talking to my mother about this the other day. I asked her, “Was North Korea something you guys discussed when you were young?” And she said, “You know, my generation was so poor. We were just trying to live our lives. We didn’t really talk about things like that.”

And I think that kind of mentality still applies today in that if you’re not directly involved in North Korean affairs, like if you’re not in journalism or in government, you don’t necessarily have to be interested in it. So in that way, there’s that common attitude of indifference.

But also, the sort of fear that the older generation has is a lot more vivid. A lot more real than the fear the younger generation might have.

For example, I was born in the late ’80s and I don’t think I’ve ever really been afraid of North Korea because I haven’t grown up in that generation when spy missions and terrorist attacks were happening more frequently. When I was growing up, narratives against North Korea were beginning to change positively in South Korea, and the Sunshine Policy [of opening up relations with the North] was coming up in the 2000s.

I think younger people in South Korea today who are interested in North Korea have a more nuanced attitude toward North Korea than the older generation who are a lot more black and white.

Lindsay Maizland

What you said earlier about there being this stigma around showing too much concern over North Korea is really interesting. That doesn’t really make sense to me. Why is there a stigma around caring too much about North Korea?

Haeryun Kang

I think because the Red Scare [a period in the 1970s and ’80s when the South Korean government arrested political dissidents and fabricated charges that they were engaging in communist activities] is still very real in South Korean politics. I don’t think this self-censorship and stigma exists everywhere in South Korea. Certainly if I’m with a group of friends or in a classroom setting, I would feel comfortable talking about this. There are very dynamic discussions on the North Korean issue and the relationship with South Korea.

But despite all that, still, at the level of politics, there’s this sort of finger-pointing especially from the hardline conservatives that if you are sympathetic toward North Korea, you can be labeled a communist. You see this sort of fear in the way [the South Korean government] limits access to information for regular South Korean people. Like they can’t access North Korean websites. They can’t access real materials from North Korea.

There is a very big and growing community of North Korean defectors in South Korea [an estimated 30,208 as of December 2016]. And they appear on TV and they’re in popular TV programs talking about their life here. But the narrative that they present is usually that of “we escaped a totalitarian regime to come to a free world.” So even the defectors, it’s not the sort of setting where you can be completely comfortable being openly sympathetic to the North Korean society.

Lindsay Maizland

You said that a lot of people support reunification at some point. What would that look like in most people’s minds?

Haeryun Kang

I think a lot of people want reunification after their lifetimes because they don’t want to deal with the taxes. [In 2010, Lee Myung-bak, South Korea’s president at the time, proposed a tax to start saving for when the two countries rejoin.] But underlying this tax argument is the assumption that South Korea will be the dominant Korea to emerge from the reunification.

This absorption theory is quite popular, and that’s certainly the one that the South Korean state promotes. “It’s going to be on South Korean terms. It’s going to be a democracy when North Korea collapses” (it’s not “if”). But also there’s a lot of other frames of thought, like two-state theories, a more gradual unification, taking it step by step.

Lindsay Maizland

Is there anything else you want to add that you think isn’t being covered well by American media outlets or media outlets not based in South Korea?

Haeryun Kang

I know it’s hard to think long term and outside the current frame of geopolitics when North Korea is saying they’re planning to do something to Guam. It seems so urgent and imminent. But I think it’s also important to think about the contingency plans of what might happen to countries like South Korea and China if North Korea ever does collapse.

The North Korean collapse is an issue that’s talked about very often, but the reason “smaller” players like South Korea are important is because of the geographical proximity and the amount of refugees that might come if North Korea ever collapses.

So how do South Koreans think they are equipped to handle this problem? How can different people, different countries help with the process? All these discussions are, I think, a little bit lacking. We’re so focused on what’s happening right now.

On Thursday, Trump escalated his harsh rhetoric about North Korea by telling reporters that “things will happen to them like they never thought possible” if Pyongyang attacked the US or its Asian allies. The bellicose talk came just days after Trump stunned leaders around the world by promising to hit North Korea with “fire and fury” if it continued to threaten the US.

For its part, North Korea announced plans to fire four ballistic missiles toward the US territory of Guam, which houses 6,000 American troops. Pyongyang often issues such threats without following through, but North Korean missiles are notoriously imprecise, which means there’d be a real chance of one of those missiles landing on Guam. If it did, some form of military confrontation between the US and North Korea might be inevitable.

It’s important to take a deep breath. The North Korean regime isn’t irrational, and the ruling Kim family has spent decades working to guarantee it maintains power. It’s difficult to imagine Kim Jong Un, the current ruler, launching a nuclear missile at the US when he knows the US response would erase his country from the map.

It’s also hard to imagine Trump, for all of his tough talk, actually giving an order that would lead to millions of deaths.

But if he did give the order, the military would be duty-bound to carry it out. Trump, and Trump alone, is vested with the power to order the use of the most destructive weapons the US possesses.

“We have a nuclear monarchy,” said Joe Cirincione, the president of the Ploughshares Fund, a security foundation that tries to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, and the author of Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World Before It Is Too Late. “Once he gives the command, he cannot be overruled.”

If Trump did give the command — a very big if — here’s what would happen between the time the president made the decision and the time the missiles started to fly:

1) The president receives word of an incoming attack.

Experts I talked with said it’s unlikely that either North Korea or the United States would turn to nuclear weapons, especially as a first resort. There are other, nonnuclear options that both countries would consider first, such as sending artillery across the Korean border or launching airstrikes.

“Nuclear war is not about to break out, but [Trump’s] language increases the risk of miscalculation,” said Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to public education on arms control. “And when it comes to the Korean Peninsula, when there’s a miscalculation in war, then there’s a possibility of nuclear war.”

That war would begin with Trump receiving word of an imminent North Korean attack.

2) The nuclear briefcase, or “football,” is opened.

After the president learns of the attack, the military officer who is always by the president’s side opens a briefcase known as the “football.” The black case contains an outline of the nuclear options available to the president and instructions for contacting US military commanders around the world and giving them orders to launch their missiles.

3) There’s a conversation with two top military officers.

As mentioned earlier, the president is the sole decision-maker. But he must consult two people to make that decision.

He must talk with the Pentagon’s deputy director of operations in charge of the National Military Command Center, or “war room,” the heart of the Pentagon from where all US military operations are directed. The current deputy director is Lt. Gen. John Dolan. The president must also speak with the commander of US Strategic Command, currently Gen. John Hyten.

The length of the conversation depends on the president. It also doesn’t have to be held in the White House’s Situation Room; it can happen anywhere over a secured phone line.

The president can include whomever else he wants in the conference, meaning son-in-law Jared Kushner could in theory help Trump decide whether to use nuclear weapons. He would almost certainly include Defense Secretary James Mattis and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

But the only people who really matter are the deputy director of the National Military Command Center and the Strategic Command commander. The officers could try to convince the president not to launch an attack. They could resign on the spot in protest. Even if they did, though, they would most likely be replaced by officers willing to issue the command to strike.

4) The president makes the decision, and the order is given.

To verify that the command is coming from the president, the officers recite a code (“Bravo Charlie,” for example). The president must then respond with a code printed on a card that he carries with him at all times, known as the “biscuit.”

Then the two officers communicate with the people who will initiate and launch the attack. Depending on the plan chosen by the president, the command will go to navy crews operating the submarines carrying nuclear missiles or troops overseeing intercontinental ballistic missiles on land.

5) Launch crews prepare to attack.

The launch crews receive the plan and prepare for attack. This involves unlocking various safes, entering a series of codes, and turning keys to launch the missiles. The crews are trained to “execute the order, not question it,” said Cirincione.

6) Missiles are launched.

It could take about five minutes for intercontinental ballistic missiles to launch from the time the president announced his order. Missiles launched from submarines take about 15 minutes.

The whole process is designed to be fast because if missiles are heading toward the United States, they could land within 30 minutes. If the president chose to, he could launch US missiles before the enemy ones hit.

“The president can order a nuclear strike in about the time it takes to write a tweet,” said Cirincione.

President Trump warned North Korea on Tuesday that the US would counter its nuclear threats with “fire and fury.”

That didn’t sit particularly well with the Chinese government.

On Wednesday, Xinhua, Beijing’s official state news agency, published an editorial slamming Trump’s comments. Though it didn’t actually mention the president’s name, the wording left no doubt about whom the editorial was referring to.

“The bottom line on the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula is that there must not be any armed conflict there,” read the editorial. “There is no room for any related party to play with fire on the issue.”

At the same time, the editorial called on North Korea to stop its threatening rhetoric. On Monday, the North warned the United States that it would respond with nuclear weapons if the US attacked.

“Should the US pounce upon the DPRK with military force at last, the DPRK is ready to teach the US a severe lesson with its strategic nuclear force,” North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho said, using the acronym for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s formal name.

This isn’t the first time the Chinese government has used its Xinhua news agency to make a dig at Trump. Just last week, Xinhua published another editorial that referred to Trump’s incessant Twitter habit as “emotional venting.”

“Trump is quite a personality, and he likes to tweet,” said the editorial, translated by the New York Times. “But emotional venting cannot become a guiding policy for solving the nuclear issue on the peninsula,” referring to the Korean Peninsula.

China wants open dialogue, not conflict, with North Korea

China is North Korea’s closest and most important diplomatic and economic partner, accounting for 90 percent of North Korea’s total trade. This year, China’s overall trade with North Korea actually increased, even after China stopped importing North Korean coal in February.

That’s partly why Trump believed China could strong-arm North Korea into halting its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. But China can’t solve the nuclear crisis on its own — a fact that’s become clear to the Trump administration. Just last week, Trump bashed China on Twitter for not doing more to curb North Korea’s nuclear program.

“I am very disappointed in China,” Trump tweeted. “They do NOTHING for us with North Korea, just talk. We will no longer allow this to continue.”

So why can’t China rein in North Korea? Vox’s Alex Ward explained three reasons:

First, China uses North Korea as a buffer. If the Koreas were to unify, which remains an extremely thin possibility right now, then for at least some period, American troops would be stationed in a country that borders China. For Beijing, that’s a no-no.

Second, should the Kim regime fall, the whole country would fall with it. Having that kind of instability, with millions of refugees flocking to the border, would not make the Chinese government happy. After all, China prides itself on stability in all its forms.

Finally, having America, Japan, and South Korea worried about North Korea takes the focus off China. China has many objectives in the region, and having its adversaries’ heads turned as it makes moves in the South China Sea and elsewhere is helpful to its cause.

China is thus advocating for open dialogue rather than armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula. Wednesday’s Xinhua editorial called for a return to the stalled six-party talks, negotiations started in 2003 involving China, the United States, North and South Korea, Japan, and Russia around North Korea’s nuclear program.

“Reality has shown that tough tit-for-tat confrontations can lead nowhere, and that only dialogue can help address reasonable security concerns of the related parties for a solution acceptable to all, ensure denuclearization on the peninsula and bring a lasting peace to the entire region,” read the editorial.

China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, also recently emphasized the goal of opening dialogue with North Korea at a meeting of regional foreign ministers in Manila.

At this point, it’s unclear whether the talks will resume anytime soon. But it seems like China is trying to make them a reality.

It’s not unusual for Israeli and Jordanian politicians to hammer each other on Twitter. It is unusual for Israeli and Jordanian politicians to set up a time to literally hammer each other in person. But that’s exactly what happened Wednesday when a lawmaker from each country headed to the border with violence on his mind.

The two men — Israeli lawmaker Oren Hazan and Jordanian lawmaker Yahya Soud — had agreed to meet each other at the Allenby Bridge on the Jordan River for a fistfight. The clash was averted at the last-minute when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office ordered Hazan to turn around.

It all started after Hazan, a member of Netanyahu’s rightist Likud party, tweeted on July 23 that Jordanians “who we keep supplied with water and whose butts we defend day and night” needed “re-education.”

That didn’t sit well with Soud, a politician in Jordan’s parliament who has a history of fighting with fellow members of parliament. He took to Twitter to challenge Hazan to a fight. “Let him meet me, if he is a man,” tweeted Soud, Reuters reported.

Hazan accepted over Twitter, and they were set to meet on Wednesday morning at the Allenby Bridge border crossing. Hazan posted a photo of himself driving to the border.

A Jordanian news organization, JFRA News, was in the car with Soud as he drove to the border and live-streamed the ride on Facebook.

Unfortunately for fans of full-contact politics, the fight never happened. Netanyahu’s office didn’t explain why the prime minister ordered Hazan to turn around.

Soud learned that the meeting was called off while the live stream was still rolling. In a bit of verbal chest-pounding, Soud said he’d have hurt Hazan if the fight happened, reported the Times of Israel. “Netanyahu felt the anger of the Jordanians and acted wisely not to open the crossing before that tramp,” he told reporters during the live stream.

Hazan said on Twitter that he was also disappointed that the encounter did not happen.

Tensions between Jordan and Israel are escalating

The whole incident is undeniably bizarre and almost comical, but it also shows how tense relations between Jordan and Israel have become in recent weeks.

Hazan’s initial tweet was a response to an Israeli security guard shooting and killing two Jordanians at Israel’s embassy in Amman, Jordan’s capital, on July 23. The guard said a Jordanian used a screwdriver to attack, so the guard fired a gun out of self-defense, reported Al Jazeera.

Jordanian officials have said they want to question the guard, but Israel is refusing to allow that, noting the guard’s diplomatic immunity. The guard and Israeli embassy staff were allowed to leave Jordan, but Jordanian King Abdullah has demanded that Israel put the guard on trial.

At the same time, the Israeli-Jordanian relationship has also been strained after metal detectors were installed in the area in Jerusalem known as the Temple Mount or Haram al-Sharif, one of the holiest places in the world for both Muslims and Jews.

The move sparked protests and deadly violence throughout the region, including large demonstrations in Jordan, reported Vox’s Sarah Wildman. At least three Palestinians, including two teenagers, were killed during massive protests, and at least 200 more were wounded.

Netanyahu spoke by phone with Jordanian King Abdullah in an attempt to smooth things over. The king underscored the importance of removing the metal detectors. In the end, the metal detectors were removed.

So while the fistfight between the two lawmakers might be funny, the tensions between Israel and Jordan are anything but.

After just six months, Jared Kushner has apparently learned all he needs to know about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His conclusion? “Not a whole lot has been accomplished over the last 40 or 50 years we’ve been doing this.”

You don’t say.

In a leaked interview published by Wired on Monday, Kushner — President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, who has been tasked with brokering a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians, among other high-profile assignments — provided the deepest insight we’ve gotten to date about how he is approaching the herculean job of negotiating one of the world’s thorniest conflicts.

The picture that emerged is not very promising.

Speaking to a group of congressional interns in what was supposed to be an off-the-record meeting, Kushner said that after researching the conflict’s history and speaking with “a lot of people,” he’d learned that “this is a very emotionally charged situation.”

He then proceeded to completely dismiss everything he’d apparently learned over the past few months about the conflict’s nuances and historical context.

“Everyone finds an issue, that ‘You have to understand what they did then’ and ‘You have to understand that they did this,’” said Kushner. “But how does that help us get peace? Let’s not focus on that. We don’t want a history lesson. We’ve read enough books. Let’s focus on, How do you come up with a conclusion to the situation?”

Longtime Middle East watchers immediately blasted Kushner’s remarkable blend of naiveté and overconfidence. Dan Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, tweeted, “The combination of arrogance and ignorance that Jared Kushner brings to the Middle East is impressive. Just wow.”

Kushner is in over his head

Kushner is a 36-year-old real estate developer with no diplomatic experience. Yet he’s overseeing the US foreign policy agenda, with a specific focus on the Middle East.

Just one day before his inauguration in January, President Trump praised Kushner, saying, “If you can’t produce peace in the Middle East, nobody can.”

Since then, Kushner has visited the Middle East to try to start the peace process. When he traveled there in June, he met with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, and US officials told Reuters that he is likely to return often.

Kushner also played a central role in planning Trump’s stops in Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Rome in May, reported the New York Times.

According to Khaled Elgindy, an analyst in the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, Kushner doesn’t need to be a veteran diplomat or an experienced negotiator — but he must “understand the nuances of this conflict.”

“The problem you have is that there’s a very steep learning curve,” said Elgindy. “But I’m not sure, based on what I read, that Kushner has caught up to that learning curve.”

As Kushner revealed at the end of Wired’s audio clip, despite all his bravado, he doesn’t seem to actually have any new ideas — or any ideas at all, really — for how to move negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians forward. Asked by someone during the off-the-record interview session how the Trump administration’s approach to peace is unique, he simply responded, “I don’t know.”

He continued:

I’m sure everyone that’s tried this has been unique in some ways, but again we’re trying to follow very logically. We’re thinking about what the right end state is, and we’re trying to work with the parties very quietly to see if there’s a solution. And there may be no solution, but it’s one of the problem sets that the president asked us to focus on. So we’re going to focus on it and try to come to the right conclusion in the near future.

By the end of his long, rambling answer, Kushner seems to have realized that he might not be able to broker peace in the Middle East. And he’s probably right.

The Chinese government is now joining the long list of people who wish President Donald Trump would stop tweeting.

On Monday, Xinhua, Beijing’s official news agency, published a 1,000-Chinese character editorial deriding Trump’s incessant Twitter habit as “emotional venting.” The editorial was shared widely on other Chinese news websites.

“Trump is quite a personality, and he likes to tweet,” said the Xinhua editorial, translated by the New York Times. “But emotional venting cannot become a guiding policy for solving the nuclear issue on the peninsula,” referring to the Korean Peninsula.

Xinhua’s editorial is a direct response to Trump’s tweets targeting China over the weekend. After North Korea tested a missile on Friday that could theoretically hit New York and Washington, DC, Trump took to Twitter to bash China for not doing more to curb North Korea’s nuclear program.

“I am very disappointed in China,” Trump tweeted. “They do NOTHING for us with North Korea, just talk. We will no longer allow this to continue.”

There is a certain logic to Trump’s argument, as Vox’s Zack Beauchamp explains: China is North Korea’s largest trading partner. Beijing does have leverage over Pyongyang and could help get North Korea to the negotiating table.

But China can’t solve the nuclear crisis on its own. Xinhua’s editorial pointed that out, saying taming North Korea is not China’s responsibility and the United States should not “stab China in the back.”

“Taking out this outrage on China is clearly finding the wrong target,” said Xinhua.

Trump doesn’t have a good approach to North Korea

The Trump administration was hopeful that it could persuade China to influence North Korea and change the country’s nuclear course. Just one month ago, Trump essentially thanked China for its efforts, tweeting, “At least I know China tried!”

Since then, it’s become clearer that China will not take a harder line on Pyongyang. Chinese trade with North Korea actually increased 37.4 percent in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period in 2016. 

The White House retaliated by slapping sanctions on a Chinese bank, a Chinese company, and two Chinese individuals for their ties to North Korea, reported Vox’s Zeeshan Aleem in June.

“While we will continue to seek international cooperation on North Korea, the United States is sending an emphatic message across the globe that we will not hesitate to take action against persons, companies, and financial institutions who enable this regime,” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said in a June 29 statement on the earlier round of sanctions, clearly alluding to China.

But it’s not just China that’s ruining Trump’s plans for North Korea. As Vox’s Alex Ward reports, the president really doesn’t have any good options.

Trump has three bad options. He could try to take out North Korea’s nuclear facilities with a “surgical strike,” but that risks North Korea retaliating by attacking South Korea and Japan. He could try diplomacy, but that has not historically worked….

And then there are the sanctions — which Trump is trying. But many items the country wants and needs, like weapons and fuel, are already highly sanctioned by the US. North Korea hasn’t yet changed its course.

As North Korea’s nuclear program continues to develop by the day, all eyes are on the US’s and China’s response — and Trump’s tweets certainly aren’t helping the crisis.

“What the peninsula needs is immediately stamping out the fire, not adding kindling or, even worse, pouring oil on the flames,” Xinhua said.

Now a prominent retired Navy admiral, John Kirby, is speaking out against the ban. In a seven-tweet thread on Friday, Kirby said, “US military IS a microcosm of American society & should be representative of that society — ALL of it. Diversity is a strength.”

Kirby’s tweetstorm began just after noon on Friday, after deputy assistant to President Trump Sebastian Gorka tweeted support for his boss’s proposed ban. “We refuse to treat the American military as an ideological petri dish. Obama-era social engineering is over.”

Kirby responded almost immediately, attacking Gorka, who has never served in the armed forces, and urging him to stay out of the military’s affairs.

Kirby isn’t a politician or partisan operative. After serving with the Navy for 29 years, he retired in 2015 and worked as a State Department spokesperson from 2015 to 2017 under President Obama. His tweetstorm shows how appalled much of the military community is over Trump’s proposed ban — one that top military officials have stressed won’t take effect anytime soon.

In one of his first tweets, Kirby said he would usually ignore Gorka, but that the White House aide’s “offensive” tweet caught his attention.

“I can’t sit by as someone who never wore our uniform pretends he knows what it means,” Kirby wrote.

Throughout the thread, Kirby emphasized that diversity in the US military is important and that anyone who meets the military’s high standards should have the opportunity to defend the country.

He also correctly pointed out that there have been no disruptions in military operations in the 13 months since Obama cleared the way for transgender troops to openly serve in the military.

Kirby went on to say that transgender troops actually “make us stronger,” mentioning retired Navy SEAL Kristin Beck as an example.

Beck served for 20 years and received a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, and 27 other medals. After Trump announced the ban, she had something to say to the president: “Let’s meet face to face and you tell me I’m not worthy,” Beck told Business Insider. “Transgender doesn’t matter. Do your service.”

Kirby ended his thread by knocking Gorka again, along with anyone else in the Trump administration who hasn’t served in the military, for trying to decide policy without consulting any generals or military experts.

A day after President Trump tweeted out that he wanted to ban transgender troops from serving in the US military, Chinese LGBTQ activists celebrated a landmark victory — a court ruling in favor of a transgender man in the country’s first transgender discrimination lawsuit.

The 29-year-old man, who goes by Mr. C to protect his family and girlfriend’s privacy, said on Thursday that a court in the southwestern city of Guiyang ruled that his rights had been violated when his employer fired him in 2015 because of his gender identity.

“We hope, through this case, people in similar situations will realize they have a right, and we hope it will eventually result in a workplace anti-discrimination law,” Mr. C told the Associated Press.

Mr. C was hired for a sales job at Ciming Health Exam Center, a health care services center in China’s Guizhou province, in April 2015. But just eight days later, he was fired.

In an interview with the New York Times in 2016, Mr. C said that the company’s human resources manager complained that he dressed like a gay man and said he might damage the company’s reputation.

Mr. C took his case to court, saying he was unlawfully fired. In December 2016, the court ruled that the company should pay Mr. C but also said that there was no proof that his firing was a result of discrimination.

The latest court ruling said that Mr. C’s rights were violated and ordered Ciming to pay him the equivalent of $297. The court also said workers should not be discriminated against “based on their ethnicity, race, gender or religious beliefs,” reported the Washington Post.

“Short of a formal apology from Ciming, I think this lawsuit has achieved its purpose,” Mr. C told the AP on Thursday.

China’s LGBTQ community hasn’t had many legal victories. Until now.

Homosexuality was decriminalized in China in 1997 and declassified as a mental disorder by the Chinese Society of Psychiatry in 2001.

But at the same time, the government has restricted LGBTQ activism. Last month, the government released a new regulation banning any display of “abnormal sexual behaviors” online. And in May, authorities abruptly canceled a planned LGBTQ conference in central China.

A 2016 study by the United Nations Development Program found that only 5 percent of China’s LGBTQ population is open about their identity at work or school, and 17 percent out to their families.

China’s LBGTQ community has been trying to change that in a series of landmark legal cases but until now has lost almost all of them.

In 2016, a Chinese court rejected a gay couple’s request to be married in the country’s first same-sex marriage case. And in 2015, a lesbian student activist sued the Ministry of Education over textbooks that described homosexuality as a disorder, but the court denied her case.

Even though Mr. C’s case is one of the few where LGBTQ communities notched a win, the legal battles have still sparked conversations throughout the country about gay and transgender rights.

There are also some signs that the Chinese public is becoming more accepting of the country’s LGBTQ community. A 2015 poll by WorkForLGBT, a Chinese advocacy group, found that 77 percent of people believe that workplaces should be “welcoming of all, regardless of sexual orientation.”

One of this year’s most popular “boy bands” in China, Acrush, is actually made up of five gender-neutral women. The group’s fan page on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, has more than 700,000 followers.

For his part, Mr. C has said he will keep fighting for equality. “Although the case has ended, we still have a long way to go,” he told the Washington Post.

Now that the scope of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia has widened to include the president himself, Donald Trump seems to have realized that he needs a much stronger legal team to watch his back — and to go up against Mueller’s all-star legal team.

Last week saw a number of major changes to the makeup of Trump’s legal team. On Thursday, the spokesperson for Trump’s team, Mark Corallo, suddenly resigned just two months after accepting the job. According to Politico, Corallo was frustrated with Trump’s team and the fighting between them.

Reports that same day also revealed that Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Marc Kasowitz is no longer leading the team. That role has been given to John Dowd, a veteran Washington defense lawyer who only joined the team in June.

So who are the members of Trump’s legal team? And do they have what it takes to keep the president out of trouble? What follows is a quick guide to the team Trump has assembled to help guide him through his current legal woes.

Marc Kasowitz: Trump’s hotheaded longtime personal lawyer

Out of all the lawyers on the president’s team, Marc Kasowitz has a relationship with Trump that runs the deepest. Kasowitz has worked for Trump for the past 15 years, representing him in several high-profile cases including the series of lawsuits against Trump University in 2016 and Trump’s 2006 defamation suit against biographer Timothy O’Brien for allegedly misrepresenting Trump’s net worth.

Given their long history, it’s no wonder Trump appointed Kasowitz to lead his team of lawyers. But last week Kasowitz was pulled from the job, and his role on the team going forward will be significantly reduced.

Even though Kasowitz likes to brag that he’s been called the toughest lawyer on Wall Street, he has little experience dealing with Justice Department or congressional investigations and is known for being quite hot-tempered. Earlier this month, he threatened a stranger in a string of profane emails that included a blunt warning to “watch your back, bitch.”

John Dowd: the team’s new leader

John Dowd, a veteran Washington defense lawyer, is the team’s new leader following last week’s shake-up. He only joined the team in June and has represented many high-profile government officials, including Sen. John McCain during a 1990 investigation known as the Keating Five scandal, in which McCain was accused of improperly meeting with federal bank regulators on behalf of a campaign contributor. McCain was later cleared of any wrongdoing.

Dowd is also known for leading a Major League Baseball investigation into former Cincinnati Reds player and manager Pete Rose on gambling charges. Because of Dowd’s report, Rose was banned from the MLB for life.

A well-respected lawyer with a long history of dealing with the Justice Department, Dowd adds a much-needed boost to the team’s federal expertise.

Ty Cobb: the special counsel to the White House

Ty Cobb — who, yes, is a distant relative of the famous baseball player of the same name — is the newest member of Trump’s team. It was only announced earlier this month that he would join as special counsel to the White House. Now he’s reportedly overseeing the White House’s legal and media response to the Russia investigation.

A former federal prosecutor and partner at the multinational law firm Hogan Lovells, Cobb specialized in bribery and corruption law and congressional investigations. His addition to the team sends a clear signal of how seriously Trump is taking mounting allegations.

“He brings to the White House a lot of experience the president has not had,” Dowd, who recommended Cobb for the job, told USA Today.

Jay Sekulow: the media guru and public face of the team

Jay Sekulow has become the face of Trump’s team after regularly appearing on Fox News, CNN, and other media outlets. When he does, he always defends Trump. In an interview with CNN earlier this month, for instance, Sekulow said the president “was not aware of a meeting” between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer.

Sekulow, the chief counsel at the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative, Christian-based social organization, also adds a bit more experience to the mix. He’s argued 12 cases in front of the Supreme Court, including hearings on abortion rights and religious freedom. He also hosts his own radio talk show.

Michael Bowe: Kasowitz’s associate

Michael Bowe is one of Kasowitz’s partners and has worked with him for more than two decades. Like his boss, Bowe has specialized in commercial, corporate, and real estate litigation on Wall Street. He has created a name for himself by regularly appearing on cable news outlets. He frequently appears on CNBC, Fox Business News, and Bloomberg, according to his firm’s website.