North Korea, an impoverished country in a "time warp" that feeds paranoia at home with propaganda about a hostile world, should secure its future by laying the groundwork for talks on its nuclear weapons program, according to South Korea's foreign minister.

While Kang Kyung-wha welcomed a two month hiatus in North Korean provocations after a rapid-fire series of missile tests from the middle of this year, she said the isolated state needs to do more to defuse tensions that have escalated not only between Seoul and Pyongyang but between the regime and the U.S. under the presidency of Donald Trump.

"We very much hope there will come a point when we have North Korea at the table discussing denuclearization," Kang said in an interview Saturday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Danang, Vietnam. "But before we can do that they need to continue to not provoke and we have seen that for the past two months," she said. "We need a clear sign of a change of course from North Korea."