Washington, D.C. – This morning, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) joined Bill Hemmer on Fox News Channel’s America’s Newsroom to discuss the president’s trip to Asia amid the growing North Korean nuclear threat. Video and key excerpts below.

The president’s speech in South Korea:

“[I]t sets the stage for the hard diplomacy that’s going to follow in Beijing. It was reassuring to our allies and to South Korea, but we know that there is much more that Beijing could be doing because in fact it is the lifeline to the North Korea regime…”

China needs to fully cooperate: 

“[T]he president has at his disposal a bill of mine that passed August 2 and was signed into law that would allow us to put much more financial pressure, would give every financial institution and company in China a choice – freeze their accounts with North Korea, shut it down, or alternatively do not do business with the U.S. That’s the ultimate leverage here. But in addition, we heard last week from… the most senior defector we’ve ever had before the committee… and he shared with us the importance of continuing the momentum of these sanctions and on putting more diplomatic pressure against North Korea.”

North Korea’s exports of slave labor must stop:

“The paychecks go not to the workers. The paychecks go to the regime. So they need to shut all of that down. And we’ve passed legislation basically giving the executive branch the authority for us to enforce those sanctions against those companies worldwide. So this is part of the pressure. And the defector told us… this is the Achilles’ heel of North Korea, this life support system they have from Beijing. Shut that down and they can’t pay their generals and they obviously cannot continue to build a multi-billion dollar nuclear program. It rests upon our success here.”

A nuclear North Korea is not acceptable:

“[U]ltimately, what the president has asked for is a denuclearization of North Korea. Look, we prevent South Korea and Japan from moving forward with nuclear weapons. It is now the responsibility of Beijing to do its part and the president’s going to, face to face, communicate that.”