U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis says any military solution to the North Korea crisis would be "tragic on an unbelievable scale" and Washington is working to find a diplomatic solution with the international community.
 
In a news conference on Friday at the Defense Department, Mattis said the U.S. will continue to work with the U.N., South Korea, China and Japan to try to find a way out of the situation. 
 
Reuters news agency said that Mattis' remarks are one of the clearest indicators yet that the Trump administration will seek to exhaust alternatives before turning to military action to force Pyongyang's hand. 
 
Regarding the North's latest test of what U.S. officials say was a KN-17 missile, Mattis acknowledged that Pyongyang had likely learned a great deal from the missile which was believed to have survived reentry to some degree.

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