US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday that North Korea has "no friends left" to offer it refuge from nuclear sanctions, triggering vitriolic defiance from the Stalinist regime.
Pyonyang had hurled personal invective at Clinton and declared nuclear talks "dead", as she told Asia's largest security forum that international efforts to squeeze the North over its atomic programme were paying off.
"They have no friends left that will protect them from the international community's efforts to move toward denuclearisation," Clinton told the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum (ARF) in Phuket.
"In their presentation today they evinced no willingness to pursue the path of denuclearisation and that was troubling, not only to the United States but to the region and the international community," she added.
"I was gratified by how many countries from throughout the region stood up and expressed directly to the North Korean delegation their concern over the provocative behaviour we have seen over the past few months."
In Phuket, Clinton met with counterparts from China and Russia, two other ARF heavyweights that have traditionally been lukewarm about forthright action against North Korea.
