PM warns risk of war with North Korea 'getting greater' as Kim Jong-un writes 'suicide note'

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has warned the risk of war with North Korea is "getting greater all the time", with the leader of the rogue nation ultimately writing himself "a suicide note".

“If the leader of North Korea continues down this provocative track, the risk of war gets greater all the time,” Mr Turnbull told A Current Affair host Tracy Grimshaw yesterday.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said if Kim Jong-un continued down this "provocative track", the risk of war would continue to grow.

"The reality is, however, if he starts a war, he loses immediately," he said.

"It would be a suicide note on his part."

Mr Turnbull said the North Korean regime was not hoping to start a war, but to intimidate its neighbours and the West into lifting economic sanctions on the nation.

He said the key to reducing North Korean belligerence would be China enforcing the UN Security Council’s directives.

"They have the ability to put the screws on North Korea economically that will bring that regime to its senses," he said.

Mr Turnbull stressed it was up to China to act to quell the situation.

“Their economic relationship with China is the biggest by far. So they have the ability to turn the screws economically and bring that regime to its senses," he said.

“But he is going down a very, very dangerous path.”

It comes as the United Nations condemend North Korea's "outrageous" firing of a ballistic missile over Japan, demanding Pyongyang halt its weapons program, but holding back on any threat of new sanctions on the isolated regime.

But the quick condemnation did not arrive with any promise of a new UN sanctions resolution, amid reluctance from China and Russia to turn the screw too hard or too fast.

North Korea said the launch of an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) was to counter US and South Korean military drills and was a first step in military action in the Pacific to "contain" the US territory of Guam.

The North's leader Kim Jong Un ordered the launch to be conducted for the first time from its capital, Pyongyang, and said more exercises with the Pacific as the target were needed, the North's KCNA news agency said on Wednesday.

The launch was “the first step of the military operation in the Pacific and a meaningful prelude to containing Guam,” a statement from Kim Jong-un's administation said.

US President Donald Trump's administration was frustrated by the outcome.

Mr Trump vented some of this anger at the slow pace of diplomacy on Wednesday in one of his daily Twitter blasts, declaring: "The US has been talking to North Korea, and paying them extortion money, for 25 years. Talking is not the answer!"

China's foreign ministry said it was working with other members of the United Nations Security Council on a response to North Korea’s missile launch over Japan.

"We are going to make a necessary response to the recent test launch of the missile," foreign minister Wang Yi promised.