U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on Monday visited the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas in an apparent move to underscore the robust alliance with South Korea against the North's unrelenting saber-rattling.
Russia's foreign minister says he hopes the USA will not take unilateral action against North Korea as it did recently in Syria.
Speaking on Sunday before a handful of the 28,500 United States military personnel stationed in South Korea, Pence denounced the latest North Korea test as a "provocation". His 10-day tour of Asia comes as tensions grow in the wake of North Korea's latest missile test.
But Pence and Hwang said they were troubled by retaliatory economic moves by China against South Korea companies following the deployment in South Korea of a US anti-missile system known as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD).
Tensions have run high in the region amid a spate of recent ballistic missile tests by the North, despite the fact that USA analysts do not now believe that Pyongyang is capable of engineering a nuclear weapon small enough to fit onto the tip of a guided missile.
A U.S. Navy attack on a Syrian airfield this month with Tomahawk missiles raised questions about Trump's plans for reclusive North Korea, which has conducted several missile and nuclear tests in defiance of U.N. sanctions, regularly threatening to destroy the United States.
Later Monday, key ministers of Abe's National Security Council met to analyze the latest development in North Korea and discuss Japanese responses, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, who attended the meeting, without elaborating further.
Pence said Monday Trump was "very hopeful that China will take actions to bring about a change of policy in North Korea".
Pence said that the era of United States "strategic patience" in dealing with the North was over, after more than two decades.
The US Vice-President will leave for Japan on Tuesday.
Pence arrived in South Korea just hours after North Korea launched its latest ballistic missile - which exploded within a few seconds - and amid a weekend of fanfare in North Korea, during which the regime showed off what appeared to be new missiles created to reach the United States.
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McMaster's visits are being closely watched for clues as to the Trump administration's future course of action in the region. PM Nawaz also told him about the progress of the operation against terrorists and said there was zero tolerance against them.
China has backed North Korea since the peninsula was last at war in the 1950s, in part to prevent having an American ally on its border.
Mr. Pence arrived on a Black Hawk helicopter at Camp Bonifas, South Korea, the gateway to the DMZ, where he greeted US troops.
According to the adviser, the test had been expected and the USA had good intelligence both before and after the launch.
South Korea said the North's latest show of force "threatened the whole world".
Earlier in the day, Pence visited the Korean demilitarized zone (DMZ), which he described as the "frontier of freedom". Impoverished North Korea and the rich, democratic South are technically still at war because their 1950-1953 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.
North Korea paraded its intercontinental ballistic missiles in a massive military display over the weekend, with ruler Kim Jong Un looking on with delight as his nation flaunted its increasingly sophisticated military hardware amid rising regional tensions.
Meanwhile, Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reiterated his believe that pressure, not only dialogue, is necessary in dealing with North Korea's missile and nuclear threat. A USA aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, is heading to waters off Korea in a show of force.
Trump acknowledged on Sunday that the softer line he had taken on China's management of its currency was linked to Beijing's help on the North Korea issue.
Defying worldwide pressure, the North on Sunday tried to test-fire another missile in an attempt that failed, but which fuelled fears that it may be preparing for its sixth atomic weapons test.
Trump wrote Sunday on Twitter that China was working with the United States on "the North Korea problem".
On Friday, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, in its annual foreign-currency report, stopped short of labeling China a currency manipulator and instead urged Beijing to let the yuan rise with market forces and embrace more trade.
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