Kim Jong-un reaffirms nuclear buildup as 'only path,' designates S. Korea top hostile state

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un convened a plenary session of the Workers' Party Central Committee to review progress on decisions made at the party's 9th Congress, reaffirming the principle of strengthening the country's nuclear forces.

The North's Rodong Sinmun reported Tuesday that the 2nd plenary session of the 9th Central Committee was held from June 20 to 22. The plenary session serves as the party's main deliberative body between congresses, which are held every five years, and is typically convened twice a year — once in each half of the year.

At the session, Kim set out "the direction of party and state policy and short-, medium- and long-term tasks ahead" and drew "important conclusions," the paper said.

Participants "unanimously acknowledged that continuously expanding and strengthening nuclear forces and thoroughly exercising the status of a nuclear-armed state is the most accurate and only path to proactively and confidently responding to the complex and unpredictable changes in the international military and political situation," it added.

Kim also ordered that work to further increase "powerful national defense assets" be "carried out forcefully, without pause, entirely in our own way, and with the goal of achieving a level that can overwhelm the world," the paper added.

The session also formally reaffirmed the country's hostile policy toward South Korea.

Kim said that "even this year, the United States and South Korea have been increasingly brazen in their military buildup and modernization in the region, going so far as to pursue South Korea's acquisition of nuclear submarines, while conducting military exercises and espionage activities targeting our state at every turn, driving the situation on the Korean Peninsula to an extreme deterioration."

He declared that Pyongyang would "firmly maintain our principles of struggle against the enemy, strengthen the united front with anti-imperialist, independent forces, and oppose imperialist aggression and war moves." He particularly stressed that the party must "thoroughly uphold our principles of struggle against the enemy, which recognize South Korea as the most hostile state."

Kim also directly criticized the sixth meeting of the Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG), the South Korea-US extended deterrence body that recently convened in Seoul.

He called the NCG "even more dangerous," describing it as "a nuclear war body designed to attack our republic by combining nuclear and conventional forces," and said Washington and Seoul had "once again staged a military simulation exercise" through the group.