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Seoul, Jun 24: North Korea on Wednesday said leader Kim Jong Un suspended a planned military retaliation against South Korea, possibly slowing the pressure campaign it has waged against its rival amid stalled nuclear negotiations with the Trump administration.

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.

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

Pyongyang'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 brought up by the North's military leaders.

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

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

Yoh also said it was the first report in state media of Kim holding a video conferencing meeting, but he didn't provide a specific answer when asked whether that would have something to do with the coronavirus.

The North says there hasn't been a single COVID-19 case on its territory, but the claim is questioned by outside experts.

Kim Dong-yub, an analyst from Seoul's Institute for Far Eastern Studies, said it's likely that the North is waiting for further action from the South to salvage ties from what it sees as a position of strength, rather than softening its stance on its rival.

"What's clear is that the North said (the military action) was postponed, not cancelled," said Kim, a former South Korean military official who participated in inter-Korean military negotiations.

Other experts say the North would be seeking something major from the South, possibly a commitment to resume operations at a shuttered joint factory park in Kaesong, which was where the liaison office was located, or restart South Korean tours to the North's Diamond Mountain resort.

Those steps are prohibited by the international sanctions against the North over its nuclear weapons programme.

The public face of the North's recent bashing of the South has been Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un, who has been confirmed as his top official on inter-Korean affairs.

Issuing harsh statements through state media, she had said the North's demolishing of the liaison office would be just the first in a series of retaliatory action against the enemy South and that she would leave it to the North's military to come up with the next steps.

The General Staff of the North's military has said it would send troops to the mothballed inter-Korean cooperation sites in Kaesong and Diamond Mountain and restart military drills in frontline areas.

Such steps would nullify a set of deals the Koreas reached during a flurry of diplomacy in 2018 that prohibited them from taking hostile action against each other.

Also condemning the South over North Korean refugees floating anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border, the North said Monday it printed 12 million of its own propaganda leaflets to be dropped over the South in what would be its largest ever anti-Seoul leafleting campaign.

It wasn't immediately clear whether Kim's decision to hold back military action would affect the country's plans for leafleting. The North's military had said it would open border areas on land and sea and provide protection for civilians involved in the leafleting campaigns.

The North has a history of dialling up pressure against the South when it fails to get what it wants from the United States. The North's recent steps came after months of frustration over Seoul's unwillingness to defy US-led sanctions and restart the inter-Korean economic projects that would breathe life into its broken economy.

Nuclear negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington largely stalled after Kim's second summit with President Donald Trump last year in Vietnam, where the Americans rejected North Korea's demands for major sanctions relief in exchange for a partial surrender of its nuclear capabilities.

China is aggressively pursuing a diverse range of tactics -- from cyber-attacks to recruiting insiders for economic espionage, Indian security agencies have warned. The specific alert circulated among key stakeholders suggests that Chinese operatives are not only planning to steal classified cutting-edge defense technology but also eyeing to recruit best academicians and researchers around the globe, especially from the US.

Sources said they have noticed that China has authorized an "aggressive program of stealing US science and technology information by recruiting Americans in the technology sector with access to trade secrets".

In the technology sector of the US, many Indians scientists are working at the forefront. "This is a serious matter for Indian government and security establishments," said a top source further adding that Chinese always pursue economic espionage because it suits their low cost manufacturing sector on the basis of stolen research and costly design developed by top companies across the globe.

"An alert was also issued in early January about Chinese cyber intrusion attempts at several companies where Indian researchers are working. The espionage attempt was to target UAV technology and certain top-end military equipment designs. After stealing the techniques and design, China starts producing these equipment domestically and sells at a cheaper rate, inflicting irreparable damage to the original equipment manufacturers," the sources in the security establishment observed.

Recently, the US accused China for targeting academia by sending researchers to American labs and using talent recruitment programme to steal scientific analysis. The US has also found that young recruits of the People's Liberation Army posing as students are entering into various universities across the globe to get research papers and recruit academia.

Earlier this year, the US charged a former Boston University student of visa fraud for failing to disclose the status as a lieutenant in the China's People's Liberation Army.

The US intelligence agencies have found that their "universities have become a soft target in the global espionage war with China".

In January this year, the US Department of Justice charged a leading academician at the Harvard University for hiding his alleged role in a Chinese government programme.

In July last year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray had revealed that the FBI is probing nearly 1,000 cases of economic espionage and attempted intellectual property theft, nearly all of them leading back to China.

Accordingly, Indian Missions have been informed about the threats being posed by Chinese spies and attempts to recruit Indian scientists and technologists working in the US and other parts of the world.

Sources further stated that security establishments in India have informed the scientist fraternity to be on alert amid threat posed by Chinese spies.

The Chinese had earlier recruited a personnel, Dongfan Chung, working at Boeing for economic espionage. Chung had stolen secret technology to benefit Chinese government and during the raid at his house more than 2.5 lakh classified pages related to Boeing were recovered.

"There has been intense debate on the international platforms regarding Chinese-sponsored theft of intellectual property. American agencies have gone on record to say that China was targeting trade secrets. In the backdrop of pandemic and global health crisis, Indian establishments in defence and technology sectors have been told to be extra cautious as China is planning to become the most advanced economy while the other countries are crippled by the highly contagious virus," the sources further added.

Feb 5: Pakistan will buy more palm oil from Malaysia, Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Tuesday, aiming to help offset lost sales after top buyer India put curbs on Malaysian imports last month amid a diplomatic row.

India imposed restrictions on refined palm oil imports and informally asked traders to stop buying from Malaysia, the world's biggest producer of the edible oil. Sources said the move was in retaliation for Malaysia's criticism of India's policy on Kashmir.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said on Tuesday that he discussed palm oil with Khan who was on a visit to Malaysia and that Pakistan had indicated it would import more from Malaysia.

"That's right, especially since we noticed India threatened Malaysia for supporting the Kashmir cause, threatened to cut palm oil imports," Khan told a joint news conference, referring to India's Muslim-majority region of Kashmir.

"Pakistan will do its best to compensate for that."

India is a Hindu-majority country while Malaysia and Pakistan are mainly Muslim. India and Pakistan have been mostly hostile to each other since the partition of British India in 1947, and have fought two of their three wars over competing territorial claims in Kashmir.

Pakistan may have bought around 135,000 tonnes of Malaysian palm oil last month, a record high, India-based dealers who track such shipments told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The figure is close to estimates of 141,500 tonnes from Refinitiv, which show sales to India in January may have plunged 80% from a year earlier to 40,400 tonnes.

Malaysia will release official export data on Monday.

Pakistan bought 1.1 million tonnes of palm oil from Malaysia last year, while India bought 4.4 million tonnes, according to the Malaysian Palm Oil Council.

Malaysian palm oil futures rose on Tuesday after Khan's comments and on expectations of a steep drop in production in January.

STRONG TIES

India has repeatedly objected to Mahathir speaking out against its move last year to strip Kashmir's autonomy and make it easier for non-Muslims from neighbouring Muslim-majority Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan to gain citizenship.

At the news conference, Mahathir did not refer to Kashmir but Khan did.

"The way you, PM, have stood with us and spoken about this injustice going on, on behalf of Pakistan I really want to thank you," Khan said.

He also said he was sad he had been unable to attend a summit of Muslim leaders in Malaysia in December. Saudi Arabia did not attend the summit, saying it was the wrong forum to discuss matters affecting the world's Muslims and Khan belatedly pulled out.

Some Pakistani officials, unnamed because they were not authorised to speak to the media, said at the time that Khan pulled out under pressure from Saudi Arabia, a close ally, although local media reported his officials denied that was the reason for his absence.

"Unfortunately our friends, who are very close to Pakistan as well, felt that somehow the conference was going to divide the ummah," Khan said, using the Arabic word for the Muslim community but not mentioning Saudi Arabia by name.

"It is clearly a misconception, as that was not the purpose of the conference."