Attack Seoul News Today

That his nuclear button was bigger than kim jong uns, and a north korean newspaper said that president trumps statement was "the spasm of a lunatic." officials say the administration is considering a limited first strike on north korea to send a signal to kim that theres a price to play for building his missile and nuclear programs. the former commanders warnings are stark. what do you think the response from the north would be? what kind of casualties are we talking about? >> were talking about...

Writes in politico, "the downside ranges from a cycle of retaliatory violence to outright nuclear war targeting u.s. territory." and a democratic senator wrote to secretary james mattis, warning that kim jong un would see a strike as the opening salvo in a war. what might u.s. forces target in a so-called surgical strike? >> the most likely preemptive strike would go against nuclear development facilities and known launch sites. and those capabilities that exist. and there would be a strike agai...

Plans to hold an emergency meeting tomorrow morning at 10:00 eastern to discuss north koreas latest provocation. cnn is covering every angle of this story. we have international correspondents around the globe. paula hancock is in seoul. alexandra fields is in tokyo, barbara starr is at the pentagon with more on the possible u.s. military options. paula, i want to start with you. how is south korea reacting? >> reporter: well, ana, theres a little more reaction than we usually see from a nuclear...

Korea, the conventional wisdom remains unchanged that north korea will attack seoul, will attack south korea. thousands if not tens of thousands could be killed. this has become one of the biggest problems in going to really convince kim, you have to convince kim jong-un that he is threatened, that he cannot survive himself and his regime if they were to launch an attack. not total annihilation, not annihilation of the north korean people, but to convince kim that he cant survive. >> barbara sta...

Tenuous picture based on what weve seen in the last 24 hours. but those plans that mark has talked about and rick has talked about, they have been in place for years. and those forces exist. but what we have now is whats called a zero notice type of a scenario. in other words, the north koreans have a capability to launch artillery without any warning at all, zero warning, zero notice. that creates this incredible drama, this cataclysmic event thats going to take place in seoul. the evacuation o...

Aside the idea of reaching guam or reaching the united states, even if whatever helps they have, they just used on south korea or surrounding countries, do you have any sense of the death toll that is potentially involved here? >> you know, i really do. we have 30,000 troops in south korea that are reachable easily by the north koreans. in addition to that, the population of seoul is 20 million, give or take a little. seoul is so close to the dmz that its reachable by artillery fire. if they hav...

Options does the u.s. have militarily against north korea? >> well, they have a range of options. the problem is all of them are bad. no matter what happens, any military action, it is going to precipitate the one thing that we dont want, a massive north korean attack on the south. and as general hertling said in the last hour, the human cost of that would be astronomical. theyve got i believe over 10,000 artillery troops just north of the dmz. the north koreans have developed an entire class of...

Fear, but just from a military standpoint, we talked to general hertling about this in the last hour, the level of destruction in the region in any kind of conflict between north and south korea that the u.s. is involved in, if china gets involved as well, its not something that the united states has seen for a very long time or frankly that the world has seen. >> absolutely. we have not. and its certain. the destruction and death that would occur is certain. seoul understands that. president mo...

Absorption really putting forth a proengagement the policy with north korea. further for the of the dmz the border between the north korea. we saw grand celebrations after the icbm launch in north korea. many of the top leadership of the regime. we saw many of the scientists involved in in icbm launch showing just how -- how much of a celebration there is in pyongyang. there was dancing in the streets. so obviously a very different response in north korea. the regime extremely pleasewood the suc...

Military action on the table. >> i have some pretty severe things that were thinking about. >> in his first public statement, defense secretary james mattis says diplomacy still is the priority in controlling north koreas new missile launches. >> i do not believe that capability in itself brings us closer to war because the president has been very clear and secretary of state has been very clear that we are leading with diplomatic and economic efforts. >> the secretary has long warned that war w...