“Our final goal is to establish the equilibrium of real force with the US and make the US rulers dare not talk about military option for the DPRK,” Kim said Friday, according to state news agency KCNA.

The North Korean leader also “stressed the need to run at full speed and straight, continuing to qualitatively consolidate the military attack capacity for [a] nuclear counterattack the US cannot cope with.”

“We should clearly show the big power chauvinists how our state attain the goal of completing its nuclear force despite their limitless sanctions and blockade,” he added, KCNA reports.

On Friday morning, North Korea fired another missile which flew over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.

The launch came mere days after the UN Security Council, including China and Russia, agreed on a new round of sanctions which fixed an annual cap of 2 million barrels worth of oil imports into North Korea as well as a ban on the country's textile exports.

Tensions have been steadily rising on the Korean peninsula over the past few months, with Pyongyang conducting several missile and nuclear tests in defiance of rulings by the UN Security Council, while the United States has continued to carry out joint exercises with South Korea and Japan while amplifying its rhetoric against Pyongyang.

“North Korea best not make any more threats to the US. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen,”President Donald Trump said in August. In response, North Korea said it was “carefully examining” a plan for a missile strike near the US territory of Guam, a Pacific island some 3,400km away from the Korean peninsula.