North Korea has announced it'll suspend "military action plans" against South Korea

 after a gathering of the governing party's Central commission presided over by leader Kim Jong Un, the official KCNA press agency said on Wednesday.

The video conference meeting on Tuesday also discussed documents outlining measures for "further bolstering the war deterrent of the country", KCNA reported.

The committee members "took stock of the prevailing situation" before deciding to suspend the plans, the report said, without elaborating.

Political tensions between the 2 Koreas are rising over Pyongyang's objections to plans by defector-led groups in South Korea to fly propaganda leaflets across the border. North Korea is additionally suffering under economic sanctions that it wants to be eased as a part of denuclearisation talks that are stalled for months.
North Korea claims the defectors' campaigns violate an agreement between the 2 aimed toward preventing military confrontation, and has accused them of insulting the dignity of North Korea's supreme leadership.

In recent weeks, North Korea has blown up a joint liaison office on its side of the border, declared an end to dialogue with South Korea, and threatened action.
Kim's sister, Kim Yo Jong, warned last week of retaliatory measures against South Korea that would involve the military, although she didn't elaborate.

The General Staff of the Korean People's Army later said it had been studying an "action plan" that included sending troops into joint tourism and economic zones, reoccupying border guard posts that had been abandoned under an inter-Korean pact, taking steps to "turn the battlefront into a fortress", and supporting plans for North Korea to send its own propaganda leaflets into South Korea.
North Korea's military was seen putting up loudspeakers near the Korean DMZ, a military source told Reuters on Tuesday. Yonhap press agency reported on Wednesday that the loudspeakers were being removed.

Yoh Sang-key, spokesman of South Korea's Unification Ministry, said Seoul was "closely reviewing" North Korea's report but didn't elaborate further. He also said it had been the primary report in state media of Kim holding a video conferencing meeting.

Al Jazeera's Rob McBride, reporting from Seoul in South Korea, said the North's actions follow a now-familiar pattern of "increase in tensions with tons of vitriol, rhetoric and threats just for it all to be dialed down".

"It seems North Korea has achieved its interim objective, in terms of getting international attention and reminding us where Korea is. it's certainly unnerved South Korea - which will cause more humanitarian aid, which South Korea can give despite international sanctions," he said.

"This has been important also for the individuals involved. We've had Kim Yo Jong coming to the fore and increasing her stature on Korea and therefore the world stage. it's allowed Kim Jong Un, in his first statement altogether of this, to seem because the voice of reason and dial things down - really doing a sort of good-cop bad-cop routine, with Kim Jong Un emerging as an honest cop on the day before a crucial anniversary."

Thursday marks 70 years since the beginning of the Korean War. The fighting led to 1953 with an armistice. a proper peace has never been signed.