PYONGYANG, June 16. /TASS/. North Korea has announced plans to deploy its forces to the zones that had been demilitarized under the inter-Korean agreement, the General Staff of the Korean People's Army said in a statement published by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Tuesday.

The Korean People's Army is studying "an action plan for taking measures to make the army advance again into the zones that had been demilitarized under the north-south [Korea] agreement, turn the front line into a fortress and further heighten the military vigilance against the south," the statement said.

"Our army is keeping a close watch on the current situation in which the north-south relations are turning worse and worse, and getting itself fully ready for providing a sure military guarantee to any external measures to be taken by the Party and government," it said. "We will map out the military action plans for rapidly carrying out the said opinions to receive approval from the Party Central Military Commission."

On Monday, North Korea warned the South that its armed forces were preparing an act of retaliation over spreading leaflets insulting its supreme leadership. On Saturday, the younger sister of Kim Jong-un, Kim Yo-jong, who is First Vice Director of the United Front Department of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), warned that Pyongyang was planning to take the next step soon. She stressed the need to halt all ties with the South, announcing that further decisions would be made by the General Staff.

On June 9, North Korea cut all lines of communications with Seoul in response to its leaflets, which it condemned as a hostile act violating inter-Korean peace agreements.

After the Pyongyang summit in September 2018, the leaders of North and South Korea, Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in, signed a deal on withdrawing all troops from the demilitarized zone, disarming the servicemen on duty in the border village of Panmunjom and also reducing the number of observation posts in the demilitarized zone.