North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called for "diplomatic and countermeasures", as announced yesterday, North Korea's official media, hours before a deadline set by Pyongyang for Washington to change its stance on nuclear talks.
Kim's comments came during a plenary session of the ruling Labor Party, and hours before his New Year's speech, to announce the "new path" that he intends to take at the end of that deadline.
In a hours-long speech, Kim called for measures to rebuild the economy, as well as "diplomatic and military countermeasures, to firmly protect the sovereignty and security of the country," according to the official North Korean News Agency.
The agency said that the participants in the ruling party meeting, which began on Saturday, will continue to discuss an "important document", without specifying its content.
After an unprecedented rapprochement between Washington and Pyongyang in 2018, negotiations over the North Korean program reached a dead end, after the failure of the Hanoi summit in February between US President Donald Trump and Kim.
The two countries have not succeeded in agreeing to dismantle the North's nuclear program, in exchange for the lifting of sanctions on Pyongyang.
There were rumors that Pyongyang might give up the "armistice" in terms of stopping tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles, which the United States might put in place, although the worrying threat of a "Christmas gift" to Washington no longer appears to exist.
Lev-Erik Eisley, a researcher at the University of Iowa in Seoul, believes that North Korea may consider the period leading up to the April legislative elections in South Korea as "an opportunity to seek the maximum benefits, in exchange for the slightest concessions."