SEOUL, South Korea — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to implement the “toughest” anti-U.S. policy, state media reported Sunday, less than a month before Donald Trump takes office as U.S. president.

Trump’s return to the White House raises prospects for high-profile diplomacy with North Korea. During his first term, Trump met Kim three times for talks on the North’s nuclear program. North Korea’s support for Russia’s war against Ukraine also poses a challenge to efforts to revive diplomacy, experts say.

During a five-day plenary meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party that ended Friday, Kim called the U.S. “the most reactionary state that regards anti-communism as its invariable state policy.” Kim said that the U.S.-South Korea-Japan security partnership is expanding into “a nuclear military bloc for aggression,” according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

It said Kim’s speech “clarified the strategy for the toughest anti-U.S. counteraction to be launched aggressively” by North Korea

— The Associated Press