Pyeongyang: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has instructed the country’s military to accelerate “war preparations” to counter “extreme confrontation moves” of the United States and its allies in the Korean Peninsula, North Korean state news agency KCNA reported Thursday.

Kim made his remarks during the second-day sitting of the 9th Plenary Meeting of the 8th Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, which took place on Wednesday.

“He set forth the militant tasks for the People’s Army and the munitions industry, nuclear weapons and civil defence sectors to further accelerate the war preparations, on the basis of in-depth analysis of the grave political and military situation in the Korean peninsula which reached extreme due to the anti-DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] confrontation moves of the U.S. and its vassal forces unprecedented in history,” KCNA said.

The North Korean leader also clarified the party’s independent principle to “expand and develop the relations of strategic cooperation with the anti-imperialist independent countries and dynamically wage the anti-imperialist joint action and struggle on an international scale under the rapidly changing world geo-political situation” and indicated the orientation of the country’s foreign politics toward the south, the report read.

The state media has earlier reported that Kim Yo Jong, a senior party official and sister of the country’s leader, sharply condemned the “provocations” of the US and its allies in the Korean Peninsula, accusing them of threatening peace and stability in the region, and called on the United Nations Security Council and the international community to condemn these actions.