North Korean leader Kim Jong-un delivers an address during a meeting of the ruling Workers' Party in Pyongyang, Saturday. / Yonhap

By Rachel Lee

North Korea vowed Sunday to strengthen its self-defensive nuclear deterrence, rejecting the new U.N. sanctions imposed Friday in response to Pyongyang's latest ballistic missile test.

The U.N. Security Council passed the U.S.-drafted resolution, which includes measures to slash North Korea's petrol imports by up to 90 percent and a ban on exports of North Korean goods.

The North Korea's foreign ministry said in a statement that the new sanctions, "manipulated by the U.S. and its loyalists," were a grave violation of the country's sovereignty and an act of war, which destroys the peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and the region.

"If the U.S. wants to live peacefully, hostile policies towards DPRK should be scrapped, and they should learn how to live together with the country like us with nuclear weapons and awake from their illusion that they can make us give up the nuclear weapons that went through all kinds of hardships," the statement said.

During the 5th Conference of Cell Chairpersons of the Workers' Party of Korea, Saturday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said his country will start its bold plans to build up a powerful socialist state, declaring a fight against non-socialist elements, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Sunday.

Kim said the party cells, basic organizations of the party, should be further strengthened and all the party cell chairpersons should fulfill their responsibilities and duties in order to successfully carry out the important and urgent tasks set forth by the party, the news agency said in its English edition.

"He said the offensive should be launched in the party cells, the bases educating the party members and other working people and training them into revolutionaries and the lowest revolutionary posts defending Korean-style socialism," the KCNA said.

Kim also stressed the need to launch a brave offensive to implement the decision of the Second Plenary Meeting of the Seventh Central Committee of the party and attain the goal of the five-year strategy for national economic development set forth at the Seventh Workers' Party of Korea Congress to "smash the escalating aggression moves of the U.S. imperialists and their sanctions and pressure and promote the radical progress of socialist construction in a more exciting and elated posture than ever before," the agency said.

The party wrapped up the three-day conference, Saturday. They lead the WPK's lowest-level units, consisting of five to 30 members.