Beijing: China has likened the United States and North Korea to two speeding trains heading for a crash.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said tension was rising on the Korean Peninsula as North Korea ignored international resolutions, firing missiles and developing nuclear weapons, while the US and South Korea continued "enormous scale" military exercises.

He said the two sides were like "two accelerating trains coming toward each other with neither willing to give way".

China would try to flash the red lights to defuse a looming crisis, he told journalists in Beijing.