The Nuclear Security Summit that ended on Tuesday may have failed in its main task but in summits on the sidelines achieved consensus about the need to keep North Korea in check.

President Lee Myung-bak told reporters after the summit, "The leader of China also pointed out that North Korea should tend to the livelihood of its people and that it was inappropriate to spend hundreds of millions of dollars" on what Pyongyang claims is a space rocket launch.

The heads of all of the other countries in six-party talks on the North's nuclear program -- the U.S., China, Russia and Japan -- took part in the summit, and the biggest issue when they met with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak on the sidelines was the North Korean nuclear standoff. The leaders of 16 countries including Australia, Italy, New Zealand, India and Thailand, and the heads of major international organizations such as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, all urged the North to halt its missile launch when they met with Lee.

Meanwhile, North Korea issued a scathing criticism of the U.S. President Barack Obama. A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman in a statement on Tuesday complained bitterly that the U.S. leader labeled its planned "peaceful launch of a satellite" as a "provocation." Most people believe the launch in fact aims to test a long-range ballistic missile.