North Korea announces agreement with South

Last week, North Korea reportedly fired shells at a South Korean military base across the demilitarized zone trying to shoot loudspeakers broadcasting propaganda.

The blasts, which left two South Korean soldiers seriously wounded, prompted Seoul to resume its propaganda broadcasts for the first time in more than a decade.

The talks had played out against a risky military stand-off, which triggered a rare artillery exchange over the border last week, with both sides ramping up the military rhetoric and flexing their weaponry.

“And President Park knows that of course”, said Yang Moo-Jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

That would leave open the issue of the propaganda broadcasts, which Seoul had vowed to continue in the face of an ultimatum from Pyongyang to desist or face military action. The North has also used amphibious landing crafts to move special forces near the Koreas’ maritime border on the Yellow Sea, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported Monday.

Even as talks were ongoing, reclusive North Korea had deployed twice the usual artillery strength at the border and had around 50 submarines away from base, the South’s defence ministry said.

It is expected Kim is to announce North Korea’s expression of “regret” over the recent provocations that would in turn grant Pyongyang their request to dismantle South Korea’s loudspeakers. He said the countries will hold talks to improve their ties soon in either Seoul or Pyongyang.

“The two sides may be able to come up with a statement in which some sort of “regret” is expressed without explicitly naming the North as a responsible party”, said Jeung Young-Tae, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.

On Monday, South Korea’s president, Park Geun-hye, told her staff during a meeting that it is “most important to get North Korea’s apology” for the injuries to the two soldiers. It was 10 times the rate under normal situations, raising anxieties on the South Korean side as the military was unable to track DPRK submarines with its surveillance devices.

Seoul and Pyongyang remain technically in a state of war since the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty.

On Saturday, the residents of Yanji, the seat of the Yanbian Korean autonomous prefecture in China’s eastern Jilin province, spotted tanks and armored vehicles from the People’s Liberation Army heading towards the country’s border with North Korea.

The standoff exacerbated the turmoil in South Korea’s financial markets, triggering a market sell-off that sent the Korean won to a four-year low and drained more than $900 million from Korean equities in a week.