Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said Wednesday that China needs to start getting involved in “the North Korea problem,” amid claims from North Korea that it has conducted a hydrogen bomb test.

“You have this madman over there who probably would use it and nobody talks to him other than, of course, Dennis Rodman talked to him. That’s about it,” Mr. Trump said on “Fox and Friends,” referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. “But nobody is talking to him whatsoever, and nobody is discussing it with China.”

“China has total control, believe me. They say they don’t; they have total control over North Korea,” he said.

“Without China, they wouldn’t eat,” he said. “They wouldn’t have food, they wouldn’t have anything. So, China should do it. They say they can’t, they don’t have that power — they’re toying with our politicians who don’t know what they’re doing.”

“It’s about time that China now gets involved with the North Korea problem. We got to close it down, because he’s getting too close to doing something,” Mr. Trump said. “Right now, he’s probably got the weapons, but he doesn’t have the transportation system. Once he has the transportation system, he’s sick enough to use [it]. So we better get involved.”

He also said South Korea is going to have to start “ponying up.”

“We’ll do it in a very nice manner — they’ll like us even more than they like us now, which they probably don’t like us very much [because] most countries don’t like us very much, even though they take advantage of us,” Mr. Trump said. “And they’ll be happy, and they’ll have to pay something because we cannot continue to police the world and get nothing for it.”

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