The dictatorship has threatened nuclear retaliation against the US after learning that an American naval carrier strike group had been dispatched to waters off its coast.
Mr Pyne said that despite extraordinary scenes in the Middle East in the last couple of weeks and a six-year war in Syria, the outcomes in the Middle East were more predictable in many respects than those in North Korea, because it was very unlikely that ISIS or other players there would defeat the allied cause.
“In the North Korean situation it is much more unpredictable and they have greater capability to hurt Australia, the United States, South Korea, Japan obviously and many of our other allies around our region,” he said.
Mr Pyne highlighted the unpredictability of North Korean leadership.
“Kim Jong-un has been the third generation in Korea.
“It’s quite likely he believes the rhetoric of the last couple of generations about their very special place in the world, and that makes his decisions less likely for us to predict.
“That is a significant consequence to Australia, so we welcome the United States taking a firm line with North Korea, and as Malcolm Turnbull has said, it is very important that China takes full responsibility for what it can do in the North Korean situation to settle that part of the world and to ensure that North Korea knows that they need to behave as a good international citizen rather than the way they have been behaving in recent times.”
