North Korea on Wednesday said leader Kim Jong-Un suspended a planned military retaliation against South Korea, a day before the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of a war that killed and hurt millions, left large parts of the Korean Peninsula in rubble and technically still continues.

Last week, the North had declared relations with the South as fully ruptured, 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 activists floating anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border.