U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday North Korea would collapse without China's assistance as he stressed the importance of getting Beijing behind efforts to denuclearize Pyongyang.

"I think it's fair to say that without China, North Korea would collapse," he said at a congressional hearing.

The senator, who has long followed North Korea, especially when he was a senator, pointed out that China provides almost three-quarters of North Korea's fuel.

"China is a significant banking conduit for the North," he told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "China provides significant food aid to the North. Therefore I think it's important for us to work with China. And I think China has indicated its willingness to work with us."

Kerry traveled to Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo last week on his first trip to the region as Washington's top diplomat.

He said China's role is also important to South Korean President Park Geun-hye's efforts to reach out to North Korea, a policy aimed at building a trust-based dialogue process on the peninsula.

"She obviously can't do that in the middle of this kind of process," Kerry said. "My hope would be that the Chinese will come to the table in a way that they never have before."

The U.S. and China can work together to "redefine what's in all of our interests, which is a kind of stability," he said.

"And that could ultimately even open up the possibility of President Park's outreach to be able to have an impact," he added.

Kerry is known for longstanding support for talks with North Korea, but he made clear Washington would break the cycle of Pyongyang's provocations followed by talks and hasty deals on incentives.

"We're not going down the same old road. We're not going to reward them and come to the table and get into some food deal without some pretty ironclad concept of how we're going forward on the denuclearization," Kerry said.

He would not describe the Obama administration's North Korea strategy as "strategic patience."

"I'd call it strategic impatience," he said. (Yonhap News)