North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his top political officers pledged to boost production of “powerful nuclear weapons” during a three-day party meeting that ended Sunday, according to state media, while also agreeing to push forward space development despite the "severe defect" of a recent satellite launch failure.

In a report presented at the Central Committee’s eighth plenum, the Workers’ Party politburo called for strengthening self-defense capacity with new weapons to deter the U.S. and other enemies amid a “changed security environment,” the party-run newspaper Rodong Sinmun reported Monday.