North Korea staged a mass rally on January 5 in Pyongyang and vowed to carry out policy decisions made at a recent Workers’ Party of Korea’s (WPK) plenary meeting, state media reported on January 6.In a video provided by the North’s official news agency KCNA, which Reuters cannot independently verify, thousands of Pyongyang citizens and workers were seen marching and listening to officials’ speeches during the rally at May Day stadium.During the party meeting in last December, North Korea leader Kim Jong Un ordered his country’s military, munitions industry and nuclear weapons sector to accelerate war preparations to counter what he called unprecedented confrontational moves by the U.S., according to KCNA.Kim also laid out economic goals for the new year, calling it a “decisive year” to accomplish the country’s five-year development plan, KCNA added. The North has suffered serious food shortages in recent decades, including famine in the 1990s, often as a result of natural disasters.