North Korea 'begging for war', US ambassador tells UN

Kim Jong-un and his his Pyongyang regime is ‘begging for war’, the US ambassador to the United Nations said at an emergency meeting on Monday.

Nikki Haley was reacting to the latest missile launch from North Korea, which said it had carried out a controlled detonation of a hydrogen bomb on Sunday.

In the emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, the US ambassador said it was time to use whatever diplomatic means were left at its disposal.

"The time for half measures in the Security Council is over," Haley told the other ambassadors. "The time has come to exhaust all of our diplomatic means before it’s too late. We must now adopt the strongest possible measures."

Haley added that Kim’s actions in the development of his country’s missile programmes show no regard for the responsibility that is carried with the possession of such weapons.

"His abusive use of missiles and his nuclear threats show that he is begging for war. War is never something the United States wants, we don’t want it now."

Pyongyang has mostly ignored any previous sanctions from the UN aimed at stopping its ballistic missile programme and recently threatened a strike on the US territory of Guam.

Investors were flocking to safe havens such as gold on Monday as all major European equity markets were lower off the back of the ratcheting up in tensions in Korea.