North, South Korea agree to ease recent tensions: Yonhap

North Korea’s maneuver was detected hours after the two Koreas reached an agreement on ways to defuse heightened military tension on the peninsula in marathon negotiations.

The agreement, which was sealed after two days of long talks, stops the propaganda broadcasts against the North. The South had restarted them after two of its soldiers were injured by a landmine explosion earlier this month.

“I hope the two sides faithfully implement the agreements and build up (mutual) confidence through a dialogue and cooperation and that it serves as a chance to work out new South-North relations”, chief South Korean negotiator and presidential national security director Kim Kwan-jin said in a televised news conference.

The North has denied any role in the recent mine blasts and analysts say it will never accede to the apology demand.

A high-ranking government official here said, “North Korea wanted a promise from the South to permanently end the propaganda broadcasts”.

“We don’t have a sense of what the edge of his envelope is – and clearly North Korea’s trying to push the edge of the envelope”, Yun told CNN.

Park had said earlier that the loudspeaker broadcasts would continue unless North Korea apologized for the recent provocations.

The two Koreas technically remain at war, as the countries haven’t ratified their 1953 peace treaty. North Korea has gotten the attention of the South, which has perhaps opened the door to some modest steps at rapprochement. South Korea began broadcasting propaganda with loudspeakers over the border for the first time in 11 years, prompting artillery shelling from North Korea, and counter-shelling from South Korea. Pyongyang denies responsibility.

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 defense ministry said.

According to the Washington Post, the sonic assault included the 2009 Girls’ Generation song “Tell Me Your Wish” and female speaker deriding North Korea’s isolation from the global community, offering examples like Kim Jong Un failing to meet with a single foreign dignitary since taking over for his father as the nation’s “supreme leader” in 2011. The North expressed “regret” without acknowledging its role in the landmine incident, but Pyongyang said that it would end its declared “semi-state of war” after the South turned off the loudspeakers.

It will also be viewed with some relief by the United States, which has almost 30,000 US troops permanently stationed in South Korea and had repeatedly reiterated its commitment to the defence of its key Asian ally.

Unless South Korea and the United States tighten sanctions and undermine Kim’s personality cult by infiltrating his isolated country with information, Lee said, they will “fall prey yet again to Pyongyang’s pattern of provocation-negotiation-concession and live with an ever-growing threat”.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday welcomed an agreement reached between South Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).