By Alex Jensen
SEOUL
After three days of intense negotiations, North and South Korea produced an agreement early Tuesday (late Monday GMT) on defusing tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
Yonhap news agency quoted Kim Kwan-jin, South Korean President Park Geun-hye's national security adviser, as saying that North Korea had expressed regret over a landmine explosion on the two countries’ shared border in which two South Korean soldiers were injured.
The deal came after the president had warned that the South would continue the propaganda broadcasts the North considers insulting to its leader unless it offered a clear apology and promised not to stage any more provocations.
Kim said that the South had agreed to stop the broadcasts providing there were no more "abnormal situations" on the peninsula.
The South’s psychological warfare kicked off earlier this month in response to landmine explosions that left the two soldiers seriously wounded. Seoul was later joined by the United Nations Command in blaming North Korea.
Pyongyang had maintained that it had nothing to do with the Aug. 4 blasts, while also denying starting a flashpoint last Thursday when the Koreas briefly exchanged artillery fire -- albeit without causing casualties.
The talks involving the Koreas’ most powerful defense officials were hastily arranged Saturday as the clock ticked down to a deadline set by North Korea for the South to abandon its border broadcasts.
While North Korea’s threat of “military action” may have been temporarily averted, it also emerged Monday that the authoritarian state had deployed amphibious landing craft to its frontline.
Military sources cited by Yonhap suggested that around 10 North Korean air-cushioned landing craft had been mobilized -- in addition to earlier reports that Pyongyang had called into action more than 50 submarines and double the normal level of artillery troops at the border.
Another grim signal had come from North Korea’s state media Monday, which referred to the South as “puppets” of the United States, whose “confrontational mental illness has completely reached the late stage”.
Pyongyang had abandoned such derogatory rhetoric over the weekend, but returned to business as usual with its criticism of the allies, who fought together against the North during the 1950-53 Korean War.
The conflict has never truly been resolved as it ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty.
The two Koreas also agreed to push for reunions of families separated by the Korean War in September.
Later Tuesday (Monday in the United States), Washington welcomed the agreement reached between the decades long foes.
"We support President Park's tireless efforts to improve inter-Korean relations, which support peace and stability on the Korean peninsula," State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
He added that the U.S. continues to coordinate closely with South Korea.
*Anadolu Agency correspondent Kasim Ileri contributed to this story from Washington
