North Korea’s Kim suspends military plans

North Korean leader Kim Jongun has suspended plans for military action against the South, state media reported yesterday, 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The moves included re-entering areas of the North that it had withdrawn from as part of inter-Korean projects, restoring guard posts in the demilitarised zone that forms the border and stepping up exercises.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 yesterday from border areas, which they had started setting up just two days ago to broadcast antiSouth 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.

The South’s unification ministry said it was closely and carefully reviewing the KCNA report, which said the meeting took place through video conferencing — something the ministry said it believed was a first.

Seoul had retorted with uncharacteristically stern criticism to Pyongyang’s demolition of the liaison office and harsh condemnation of President Moon Jae-in by Kim’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, saying it wouldl no longer tolerate the North’s unreasonable acts and words.

Inter-Korean relations have been in a deep freeze following the collapse of a summit in

Hanoi between Kim and US President Donald Trump early last year over what the nucleararmed North would be willing to give up in exchange for a loosening of sanctions.

The impoverished country is subject to multiple UN Security Council sanctions over its banned weapons programmes.

But the CMC meeting discussed “bolstering the war deterrent”, KCNA said, and LeifEric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said it was by no means done threatening

South Korea. Since early this month, Yo-jong — a key adviser to her brother, and mooted as potential successor — has been the face of Pyongyang’s aggressive stance towards the South over anti-North leaflets.

North Korea blew up the liaison office days after she warned it would soon be seen completely collapsed, and later she called the South’s Moon — who has long favoured engagement with Pyongyang —“disgusting” and “insane”.

Pyongyang has also said it has millions of anti-Seoul propaganda leaflets ready to send to South Korea as retaliation.

Having someone else speak for the regime “gives Kim Jongun the option of adjusting course”, Easley said.

Former US government North Korea analyst Rachel Lee said that Kim’s sister had been a constant presence in all exchanges between the two Koreas throughout 2018.

“Bringing out Kim Yo-jong was effective in maximising tensions,” she said.