REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, MANILA -- The Philippines has suspended trade relations with North Korea to comply with a U.N. Security Council resolution over its repeated missile tests, Manila's foreign minister said on Friday.

The United States and other Western countries have asked the United Nations to consider tough new sanctions on North Korea after its test last week that it said was of an advanced hydrogen bomb.

"We can say we have suspended trade relations with North Korea," Foreign Minister Alan Peter Cayetano told reporters after a meeting with the U.S. ambassador on cooperation on an anti-drugs programme. "We will fully comply with UNSC resolution including theeconomic sanctions."

Tension on the Korean peninsula has escalated as North Korea's young leader, Kim Jong Un, has stepped up the development of weapons in defiance of U.N. sanctions.