US calls on world to isolate Kim Jong Un

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Photo / AP

The United States has called on the international community to cut all diplomatic and trade ties with North Korea — including Chinese oil shipments to Pyongyang — after a groundbreaking missile test by the pariah regime.

Washington urged tough action as emergency talks on the North's latest provocation opened in the United Nations Security Council — and after US President Donald Trump derided Kim Jong Un as a "sick puppy" and threatened "major" new sanctions.

Pyongyang on Wednesday tested its third intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) — which it claimed was capable of striking anywhere in the US — snapping a two-month pause in missile launches.

North Korean leader Kim said the test of the Hwasong-15 weapons system had helped his country achieve the goal of becoming a full nuclear power, as the international community expressed outrage.

"We call on all nations to cut off all ties with North Korea," Washington's ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, told her fellow envoys.

Haley said Trump had called Chinese President Xi Jinping and urged him to "cut off the oil from North Korea".

"That would be a pivotal step in the world's effort to stop this international pariah," she said, issuing a stern warning to Kim.

"If war comes, make no mistake: The North Korean regime will be utterly destroyed," she said.

The UN Security Council was meeting at the request of the US, Japan and South Korea to consider next steps after three rounds of sanctions adopted in the past year failed to push North Korea to change course.

France's UN ambassador Francois Delattre said the council should respond with a "tightening of the sanctions" — a move that would likely entail the adoption of a new sanctions resolution.

Japanese Ambassador Koro Bessho said "the international community has to keep the pressure up".

Earlier, Trump — who had traded barbs with Kim for months — had asked Xi to use "all available levers" to press the hermit state.

"Additional major sanctions will be imposed on North Korea today. This situation will be handled!" Trump said on Twitter.

There are concerns in Seoul that Trump might be considering military action against the North that could trigger a full-scale war.

Seoul is home to 10 million people and only about 50km from the border — well within range of Pyongyang's artillery.

North Korean state media said the missile launched on Wednesday was more sophisticated than any previously tested by Pyongyang.

"The ICBM Hwasong-15 type weaponry system is an intercontinental ballistic rocket tipped with super-large heavy warhead which is capable of striking the whole mainland of the US," the North's official news agency KCNA said.