PYONGYANG/SEOUL: North and South Korea have pulled back from the brink and on Sunday resumed a second round of talks that temporarily pushed aside vows of imminent war on the peninsula. Seoul however accused Pyongyang of undermining the process with provocative naval and land deployments.

The South Korean Defense Ministry said the North had doubled its artillery units at the border and deployed two-thirds of its total submarine fleet, or around 50 vessels, outside their bases.

The first round of marathon talks on Saturday came to nothing, and South Korea’s military reported Sunday that it detected unusual troop and submarine movements in North Korea that indicated Pyongyang was strengthening its capability for a possible strike.

Still, even the decision for senior officials from countries that have spent recent days vowing to destroy each other to simply sit down at a table in Panmunjom, the border enclave where the 1953 armistice ending fighting in the Korean War was agreed to, is something of a victory.

The length of the first round of talks — nearly 10 hours — and the lack of immediate progress are not unusual. While the Koreas often have difficulty agreeing to talks, once they do, overlong sessions are often the rule. After decades of animosity and bloodshed, however, finding common ground is much harder.

South Korean presidential spokesman Min Kyung-wook did not disclose details about the first round of talks, which adjourned just before dawn Sunday. The talks began shortly after a deadline set by North Korea for the South to dismantle loudspeakers broadcasting anti-Pyongyang propaganda at their border. North Korea had declared that its front-line troops were in full war readiness and prepared to go to battle if Seoul did not back down.

An official from Seoul’s Defense Ministry said about 70 percent of the North’s more than 70 submarines and undersea vehicles had left their bases and were undetectable by the South Korean military as of Saturday.

The official, who didn’t want to be named because of office rules, also said the North had doubled the strength of its front-line artillery forces since the start of the talks early Saturday evening. “It seems that the North is pursuing dialogue on one side and preparing for battle on another side,” he said.

The standoff is the result of a series of events that started with the explosions of land mines on the southern side of the Demilitarized Zone between the Koreas that Seoul says were planted by North Korea. The explosions maimed two South Korean soldiers on a routine patrol. In response, the South resumed anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts for the first time in 11 years, infuriating the North, which is extremely sensitive to any criticism of its authoritarian system.

There was shock and worry Thursday, when South Korea’s military fired dozens of artillery rounds across the border in response to what Seoul said were North Korean artillery strikes meant to back up an earlier threat to attack the loudspeakers.