North Korea will discuss and decide on "crucial issues" at a key party meeting later this month in line with "the changed situation at home and abroad," the state-run Korean Central News Agency said Wednesday.

The report came after North Korea on Tuesday again urged the United States to make concessions in denuclearization talks with a year-end deadline set by Pyongyang for progress in the negotiations looming.

At the planned plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, Pyongyang may consider whether to restart intercontinental ballistic missile or nuclear tests, pundits say, as talks with the United States remain at a stalemate.

The news agency said the Presidium of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the ruling party on Tuesday made a decision to convene the meeting, but it is not immediately known when it will actually take place.

At the plenary meeting of the Central Committee in April 2018, the party formally decided to "discontinue nuclear test and intercontinental ballistic rocket" test-firings as well as "concentrate all efforts on building a powerful socialist economy."

North Korea, however, has recently warned that it will resume nuclear and ICBM tests should negotiations with the United States over denuclearization fail to achieve a breakthrough by the end of the year.

Pyongyang has called on Washington to abandon its "hostile policy" and stop making one-sided demands, but the latter has shown little sign it is willing to comply.

On Tuesday, a senior North Korean Foreign Ministry official, via KCNA, released a statement asking the United States not to ignore the year-end deadline.

"What is left to be done now is the U.S. option and it is entirely up to the U.S. what Christmas gift it will select to get," Ri Thae Song, vice foreign minister in charge of U.S. affairs, said in the statement in English.

Since earlier this year, North Korea has carried out test-firings of what appeared to be short-range ballistic missiles in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions banning it from developing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.

Late last week, KCNA reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the test-firing of a "super-large multiple launch rocket system" -- an action regarded as a provocation against the United States.

On Tuesday, meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump hinted at using his country's military might against North Korea if necessary, while telling reporters during a trip to London that he still has a "good relationship" with Kim.

North Korea said Wednesday that it will take "prompt corresponding actions at any level" if the United States uses its military might.

"One thing I would like to make clear is that the use of armed forces is not the privilege of the U.S. only," Pak Jong Chon, chief of the General Staff of the Korean People's Army, said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

The two countries technically remain in a state of war after the 1950-1953 Korean War ended in a cease-fire. They do not maintain diplomatic relations.


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