Called off retaliation, N. Korea tells South

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea said Wednesday its leader, Kim Jong Un, suspended planned military retaliation against South Korea in an apparent slowing of a pressure campaign it has waged against its rival amid stalled nuclear negotiations with the Trump administration.

Last week, North Korea declared that relations with South Korea had fully ruptured. It destroyed an inter-Korean liaison office in its territory and threatened unspecified military action to censure Seoul for a lack of progress in bilateral cooperation and for anti-North Korean leaflets that activists have floated by balloon across the border.

Analysts say North Korea, after deliberately raising tensions for weeks, may be pulling away just enough to make room for South Korean concessions.

In a separate statement, a senior North Korean ruling party official said the future of inter-Korean relations would depend on the South's "attitude and actions."

If Kim Jong Un does eventually opt for military action, he may resume artillery drills and other exercises in front-line areas or have ships deliberately cross the disputed western maritime border between the Koreas, which has been the scene of skirmishes in past years.

However, any action is likely to be measured to prevent full-scale retaliation from the South Korean and U.S. militaries.

The North's official Korean Central News Agency said Kim presided by video conference over a meeting Tuesday of the ruling Workers' Party's Central Military Commission, which decided to postpone plans for military action against the South proposed by the North's military leaders.

The news agency didn't specify why the decision was made. It said other discussions included bolstering the country's "war deterrent."

The agency later published a statement by Kim Yong Chol, vice chairman of the Workers' Party's Central Committee, who ridiculed South Korean Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo for his comments during a parliamentary session expressing confidence in the South's military preparedness and urging the North to completely withdraw its threat of military action.

"While this may sound like a threat, it won't be fun [for the South] when our 'postponement' becomes 'reconsideration,"' Kim Yong Chol said.

As North Korea's former top nuclear negotiator, Kim Yong Chol traveled to Washington and met President Donald Trump twice in 2018 while setting up summits with Kim Jong Un.

Yoh Sang-key, spokesman of South Korea's Unification Ministry, said Seoul is "closely reviewing" the North's reports but didn't further elaborate.