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 South Korea 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The moves included re-entering areas of the North that it had withdrawn from as part of inter-Korean projects, restoring guard posts in the Demilitarized Zone that forms the border, and stepping up exercises.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 (CMC) preliminary 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, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported, citing unnamed sources.
In addition, Pyongyang's propaganda outlets deleted online articles critical of South Korea, according to Seoul's unification ministry, with handles relations with the North.
The apparently conciliatory moves by Pyongyang are unusual, and come after analysts said it was seeking to manufacture a crisis on the peninsula in an effort to extract concessions.
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