N Korea rules out talks

North Korea ruled out talks and threatened to increase its nuclear arsenal in a fresh warning to Donald Trump's administration yesterday as the US President set off on a tour of Asia.

Trump arrived in Hawaii on Friday as he set out on the longest trip to Asia by an American president in more than a quarter century.

Trump's 12-day trip to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines, ending on Nov 14, takes him out of Washington at a time when he has been beset by several issues.

These include an intensifying federal investigation into Russian meddling in last year's election, New York's recovery from an attack earlier this week that killed eight people, and debate over a Republican tax-cut plan that if approved by Congress would be Trump's first major legislative victory.

The North's state-run KCNA news agency said in a commentary that the US should be disabused of the "absurd idea" that Pyongyang would succumb to international sanctions and give up its nuclear weapons, adding that it is in "the final stage for completing nuclear deterrence".

"It had better stop daydreaming of denuclearisation talks with us", said the commentary titled "Stop dreaming a daydream".

"Our self-defensive nuclear treasure sword will be sharpened evermore unless the US hostile policy toward the DPRK is abolished once and for all", it said, using an acronym for the official name of North Korea.

The White House said Trump will deliver a speech at South Korea's National Assembly and urge "common resolve in the face of shared threat".

But there is widespread concern in South Korea that the US president's visit might worsen the situation if Trump fails to rein in his fierce rhetoric.

Trump and the North's leader Kim Jong-Un have traded insults and threats of war in recent months.

Trump, who dismissed direct talks with Pyongyang as "waste of time", will meet with President Moon Jae-In, who came to power early this year advocating for engagement with Pyongyang, a stance denounced as "appeasement" by Trump.

Professor Koh Yu-Hwan at Dongguk University, a leading policy advisor to the government, said Seoul expected Trump to avoid putting Moon in a quandary by renewing pugnacious threats against the North, particularly with South Korea hosting the Winter Olympics in February next year.

Moon has had to dial back his policy of engagement with the North in the face of Pyongyang's persistent nuclear and missile tests.