North Korean leader Kim Jong-un presided over an enlarged meeting of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers' Party and discussed "important organizational and political measures and military steps to bolster up" the armed fores, state media said Sunday.

The meeting was held amid heightened tensions with the United States with Pyongyang threatening to seek a "new way" unless Washington comes up with a acceptable proposal in their nuclear negotiations by end of the year.

"Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un gave analysis and briefing on the complicated internal and external situation and said that the meeting would decide on important organizational and political measures and military steps to bolster up the overall armed forces of the country," the Korean Central News Agency said.

"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," it added.

The meeting also decided on "important military issues and measures for organizing or expanding and reorganizing new units in conformity with the party's military and strategic intention, changing the affiliation of some units and changing deployment of units."

KCNA, however, did not provide details on what military capability of self-defense. It did not mention when the meeting took place.

The meeting appears to suggest that the North could soon hold a plenary meeting of the party's Central Committee, where it could decide to scrap its self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile tests.

The North declared the moratorium during a plenary meeting of the Central Committee last year in a highly symbolic peace gesture that led to the first-ever summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump in June last year.

Kim and Trump held their second summit in Hanoi in February this year, but the talks ended without an agreement due to wide differences over how to match Pyongyang's denuclearization measures and Washington's sanctions relief.

The two sides held working-level talks in October, but little progress was made. (Yonhap)