North Korea said it would not react to "reckless" military drills by the South today, despite an earlier threat to retaliate, and CNN reported that Pyongyang had agreed to the return of nuclear inspectors.
Air-raid bunkers on the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong shook during the live-fire artillery exercise, which went on for just over 90 minutes, but the North Korean guns that had shelled the island after a similar drill last month stayed silent.
"The revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK did not feel any need to retaliate against every despicable military provocation," the official KCNA news agency said, quoting a communique from the North's Korean People's Army Supreme Command that dismissed the drills as a "childish play with fire".
The UN Security Council was deadlocked in its efforts to ease tensions on the divided peninsula, but the lack of North Korean response and the nuclear offer reportedly made to US governor Bill Richardson offered some breathing space.
"The situation is very tense," Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Moscow.
"There can be no optimism in this situation."
The North had threatened it would strike back if its neighbour went ahead with the live-fire exercise.
On November 23rd, North Korean artillery had shelled Yeonpyeong, close to the disputed maritime border off the west coast of the Korean peninsula, killing four people, in the worst attack on South Korean territory since the Korean war ended in 1953.
"It's a perfectly natural thing for a sovereign nation and a divided country to conduct military exercises to defend its territory in the face of military conflict," South Korean president Lee Myung-bak said in a statement.
Today's artillery exercise came hours after a UN Security Council meeting on the Korean peninsula crisis ended in an impasse, with Russia and China resisting an explicit condemnation of the North for last month's attack.
China's foreign ministry responded to the drills with a statement that said: "We strongly call for the relevant parties to maintain the greatest degree of restraint and adopt a responsible attitude to prevent the deterioration and escalation of the situation."
Reuters