Kim calls for ‘positive and offensive’ North Korea security protections

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for “positive and offensive” security measures at a high-profile meeting of North Korea’s Workers’ Party over the weekend, according to Reuters.

Kim made the remarks ahead of a Pyongyang-imposed year-end deadline for the U.S. to offer concessions in exchange for denuclearization talks, according to the news service, citing state media outlet KCNA.

In the Sunday session, Kim said “positive and offensive measures for fully ensuring the sovereignty and security of the country” were necessary, but did not elaborate further.

The session marked the largest such meeting since 2013, the first under Kim’s leadership, after smaller meetings in 2018 and April 2019.

It also marks the first time since Kim took power in late 2011 that a meeting has lasted longer than a day, according to Reuters.

“By ‘positive and offensive measures,’ they might mean highly provocative action against the United States and also South Korea,” Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean studies in Seoul, told Reuters.

North Korea has previously suggested it may resume nuclear and long-range missile testing unless the U.S. is willing to make further concessions, and cryptically vowed to give the U.S. a “Christmas gift” that has not yet materialized.

U.S. national security adviser Robert O’Brien on Sunday said that the U.S. will be “extraordinarily disappointed” if Pyongyang resumes nuclear or long-range missile testing.

Officials at the meeting also addressed the national economy, an urgent topic amid international sanctions levied against North Korea, according to Reuters. At the meeting, Kim “presented the tasks for urgently correcting the grave situation of the major industrial sectors of the national economy,” according to Reuters, citing KCNA.