Kim Jong-un today held crunch talks with military leaders after threatening a nuke launch as a “Christmas gift” for Donald Trump .
The North Korea leader intended to hammer out a plan to bolster the country's armed forces and nuclear program, it is understood.
According to reports, the North could abandon diplomacy with the US and launch either a long-range missile or a satellite-carrying rocket.
And Kim's state-run news agency KCNA says his talks with the Workers' Party's Central Military Commission discussed measures for "organising or expanding and reorganizing new units".
This included whether to change to "affiliation of some units and the deployment of (others)".
The hermit kingdom has test-launched new weapons in recent months and South Korea media today speculated the meeting might have discussed the restructuring of military units over the deployment of the new devices.
"Also discussed were important issues for decisive improvement of the overall national defence and core matters for the sustained and accelerated development of military capability for self-defence," KCNA added.
The Workers' Party's Central Military Commission is North Korea's top military decision-making body.
Kim rules the country as its supreme military commander and is the chairman of the commission.
North Korea has set a year-end deadline for the United States to change what it says is a policy of hostility amid a stalemate in efforts to make progress on their pledge to end the North's nuclear programme and establish lasting peace.
Kim and Trump have met three times since June 2018.
But there has been no substantive progress in dialogue while the North demanded crushing international sanctions be lifted first.
On Saturday, the state media said the United States would "pay dearly" for taking issue with the North's human rights record and said Washington's "malicious words" would only aggravate tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
