Chinese President Xi Jinping called for all sides to exercise restraint yesterday in a telephone call about North Korea with US President Donald Trump, as Japan conducted exercises with a US aircraft carrier strike group headed for Korean waters.
Trump sent the carrier group for exercises in waters off the Korean peninsula as a warning, amid growing fears North Korea could conduct another nuclear test in defiance of United Nations sanctions.
Angered by the approach of the USS Carl Vinson carrier group, a defiant North Korea said yesterday the deployment was "an extremely dangerous act by those who plan a nuclear war to invade".
"The United States should not run amok and should consider carefully any catastrophic consequence from its foolish military provocative act," Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the North's ruling Workers' Party, said in a commentary yesterday.
"What's only laid for aggressors is dead bodies," the newspaper said.
Two Japanese destroyers have joined the carrier group for exercises in the western Pacific, and South Korea said yesterday it was also in talks about holding joint naval exercises.
Xi told Trump in their latest telephone conversation that China resolutely opposed any actions that ran counter to UN Security Council resolutions, the Chinese foreign ministry said.
China "hopes that all relevant sides exercise restraint, and avoid doing anything to worsen the tense situation on the peninsula", the ministry said in a statement, paraphrasing Xi.
Meanwhile, sales of nuclear shelters and radiation-blocking air purifiers have surged in Japan in recent weeks as North Korea has pressed ahead with missile tests.