North Korean leader Kim Jong-un speaks during the last session of the seventh plenary meeting of the eighth Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea in Pyongyang to discuss rural issues, in this file photo released by the North's Korean Central News Agency the following day, March 1. Yonhap

North Korea has convened a key party meeting to discuss the country's diplomatic and defense strategies in response to the "changed international situation," with its leader Kim Jong-un in attendance, state media reported Saturday.

Kim took part in the enlarged plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) that opened Friday, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The meeting will discuss "the issue of the state diplomatic and defense strategy to cope with the changed international situation," and review economic projects in the first half of this year, KCNA said in an English-language report.

It said participants unanimously approved agenda items, and that the meeting entered discussions, indicating that it will likely be held for multiple days.

The meeting comes as North Korea has been seeking to strengthen ties with Russia and China amid an intensifying Sino-U.S. rivalry and Russia's war on Ukraine.

Pyongyang also faces increasing security cooperation between South Korea, the United States and Japan, with the three countries' defense chiefs agreeing to operate a system to share North Korean missile warning data in real time within the year as they met in Singapore early this month.

The North has continued to dial up tensions in recent weeks, firing two short-range ballistic missiles on Thursday, and launching a space rocket carrying a purported military spy satellite on May 31, which ended up crashing into the Yellow Sea. (Yonhap)