His comments come after Pyongyang launched another missile test on Saturday morning in defiance of warnings from the Trump administration and China.
"But so far, perhaps nothing's happened and perhaps it has". "It may mean ratcheting up those sanctions even further". After discussing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Dickerson asked if Trump thought he would use military force against the dictator. Trump has stepped up pressure to prevent Kim from obtaining the capability to hit North America with a nuclear weapon, and he's threatened to act unilaterally if China does not do more to curb its neighbor's activities.
The Trump administration could respond to the test by speeding up its plans for new U.S. sanctions, including possible measures against specific North Korean and Chinese entities, said the USA official, who declined to be identified.
He added: "And if that happens, we can't allow it to happen".
The six-party talks on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, bringing together South Korea, North Korea, the US, China, Japan and Russian Federation, were suspended in 2008 at Pyongyang's initiative.
Earlier on Sunday Pope Francis warned that "a good part of humanity" will be destroyed if tensions with North Korea escalate, and he called for diplomacy and a revived United Nations to take the lead in negotiating a resolution. This was not a nuclear test, which he was expected to do three days ago.
But as tensions fuel between the U.S. and North Korea over its nuclear weapons programme, Mr Trump said he "no idea" if Mr Kim was sane.
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President Donald Trump welcomes Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago state in Palm Beach, Florida. Trump has also said he thinks Xi will do the right thing.
"People are saying, 'Is he sane?' I have no idea. but he was a young man of 26 or 27. when his father died". But we'll see what happens. Satellite imagery of the nuclear test site in the country's northeast showed that the North was ready for a test, analysts said.
On Saturday, a North Korean mid-range ballistic missile broke up a few minutes after launch, the third test-fire flop this month.
"But we have a situation that we just can not let - we can not let what's been going on for a long period of years continue", Trump added. "The time has come for all of us to put new pressure on North Korea to abandon its unsafe path".
The Blue House said in a statement Sunday that McMaster and South Korea's Director of National Security Kim Kwan Jin spoke on the phone and reaffirmed a previous bilateral deal on cost-bearing for the THAAD deployment.
The launch comes just hours after the country announced it was "on the brink of nuclear war" as the United States staged military drills with South Korea.
South Korea's Defense Ministry has previously said that under an agreement reached during the administration of Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, South Korea offers the land and facilities for THAAD but not the cost of operations.
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