In recent weeks, Pyongyang has issued a series of Seoul vitriol sentences. (File)
Seoul:
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has suspended military action plans against the South, official media reported on Wednesday in an apparent sudden drop in tension after Pyongyang blew up a liaison office.
In recent weeks, Pyongyang has issued a series of Seoul vitriol sentences for anti-North leaflets, which defectors based in the South send across the border – usually tied to balloons or floated in bottles.
Last week, he blew up a liaison office on his side of the border which symbolized the inter-Korean rapprochement, while his soldiers said he would take multiple measures against the South.
These measures included the return to the northern areas from which he had withdrawn as part of inter-Korean projects, the restoration of guard posts in the demilitarized zone which forms the border and the intensification of the exercises.
But the official North Korean central news agency said that Kim chaired a meeting of the Central Military Commission on Tuesday that “suspended military action plans against the south”.
He did not specify.
On Wednesday, the north also began removing loudspeakers from border areas, which it had started installing just two days ago to broadcast anti-south propaganda, the South Korean news agency reported. Yonhap, citing anonymous sources.
Pyongyang’s apparently conciliatory measures are unusual and come after analysts said he was seeking to create a crisis on the peninsula in order to extract concessions.
Seoul responded with unusually harsh criticism of Pyongyang’s explosion of the liaison office and the harsh condemnation of President Moon Jae-in by Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, saying that she “will no longer tolerate” them. unreasonable deeds and words “from the North”.
But the North, endowed with nuclear weapons, “does not threaten South Korea or strengthen its alleged deterrence,” Leif-Eric Easley, professor at Ewha University in Seoul, told AFP.
“Kim’s regime had national political boxes to check and may currently be satisfied with public unity.”
“Completely collapsed”
Inter-Korean relations were frozen following the collapse of a summit in Hanoi between Kim and US President Donald Trump at the beginning of last year on what the armed North would be ready to give up in exchange for a relaxation of sanctions .
The impoverished country is subject to multiple sanctions from the United Nations Security Council for its prohibited weapons programs.
Since early June, Kim Yo Jong has been the face of Pyongyang’s very aggressive position towards the South regarding anti-North leaflets.
The North blew up the liaison office after warning a few days earlier that it would soon be seen “completely collapsed”, and later called the South Moon – which long fostered engagement with Pyongyang – “disgusting “and apparently” crazy “.
Pyongyang also said it had millions of anti-Seoul propaganda leaflets ready to be sent to the South in retaliation.
“The fact that someone else is speaking on behalf of the regime also gives Kim Jong Un the opportunity to adjust the course,” said Easley.
“He can do it in search of external concessions or because his soldiers need more time to implement the next provocation.”
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
