NKorea suspends military action plan against South

SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has suspended plans for military action against the South, state media reported Wednesday in an apparent sudden dialling-down of tensions after Pyongyang blew up a liaison office.

In recent weeks, Pyongyang has issued a series of vitriolic condemnations of Seoul over anti-North leaflets, which defectors based in the South send across the border — usually attached to balloons or floated in bottles.

Last week it blew up a liaison office on its side of the border that symbolised inter-Korean rapprochement, while its military said it would take multiple measures against the South.The moves included re-entering areas of the North that it had withdrawn from as part of inter-Korean projects, restoring guard posts in the Demilitarized Zone that forms the border, and stepping up exercises.

But the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said Kim on Tuesday presided over a Central Military Commission meeting that “suspended the military action plans against the south”. The North also began removing loudspeakers on Wednesday from border areas, which they had started setting up just two days ago to broadcast anti-South propaganda, the South’s Yonhap news agency reported, citing unnamed sources.