china has strong economic ties with pyongyang accounting for around ninety percent of its foreign trade. and for more let s bring in correspondent stephen barr awake who is standing by for us in seoul in south korea stephen it s good to see you so the u.s. is china is quick to couldn t prevent a military confrontation with north korea but what specifically is it asking of china what the u.s. really wants to do with north korea economically and china is really key to that since so much of north korea s economic activity depends on china the u.s. wants china to faithfully execute u.n. sanctions on trade with north korea and help cut off north korea s outside sources of income which are the way that it finds its nuclear missile programs just this week we heard that china has order north korean businesses operating within its territory to close down so there is some evidence that china is in line with washington on this and throw rex tillerson says it will be able to see just to what