North Korea receives familiar response from White House over nuclear test

North Korea has received a familiar kind of criticism from the White House prompted by the country's fourth nuclear test.

According to The Guardian, US officials said they refused to accept North Korea as a nuclear state.

A senior US State Department official said that they would like to see more sanctions against North Korea to contain the regime.

The now-familiar response, accompanied by similarly routine Republican calls for a harsher reaction, came as the White House echoed skepticism among independent experts that Pyongyang had indeed detonated a hydrogen bomb, a far more powerful weapon than its arsenal has previously possessed.

But White House press secretary Josh Earnest signalled that the US is unlikely to turn from the policy of "strategic patience" that US President Barack Obama has adopted since North Korea carried out a nuclear test four months after he came into office.