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North Korea has withdrawn two mobile ballistic missiles from a launch site in the eastern part of the country, according to a U.S. official, the latest hint of an easing in tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

During a fraught period last month that included near daily North Korean threats of war, U.S. and South Korean officials said they believed Kim Jong Un's regime could carry out a test launch of at least one of the missiles at any time. The United States and Japan responded by stepping up missile defenses in the region.

But the anniversary of the birth of North Korea's founder on April 15, seen as the likely date around which a launch could take place, came and went without either of the missiles being fired. And now they have been sent to a storage facility, the U.S. official said.

Pyongyang's fiery rhetoric intensified in March as the U.N. Security Council voted to tighten sanctions on the regime following the nuclear test. Annual U.S.-South Korean military drills in South Korea also fueled the North's anger, especially when the United States carried out displays of strength that included nuclear-capable B2 stealth bombers.

But a key part of the large-scale training exercises, known as Foal Eagle, concluded last week, and the intensity of Pyongyang's threats appears to have subsided. Its rhetorical exchanges with Washington and Seoul have shifted to include conditions for possible negotiations, although both sides appear to remain far apart.

It would be "premature" to make a judgment about whether the North Korean "provocation cycle is going up, down or zig-zagging," Daniel Russel, White House special assistant and senior director for Asian affairs, said Monday.

A reminder of the fragile situation came in a North Korean statement Tuesday that accused U.S. and South Korean forces of carrying out naval shelling drills near the two Koreas' disputed western maritime border.

The statement, from the North Korean military's command in the sector near that part of the border, warned of "immediate counteractions" if "even a single shell" from the drills fell within its territorial waters.

But the statement was notably free of the talk of "nuclear war" that peppered North Korean propaganda directed at the United States and South Korea during the height of the tensions in March and April.

Kim Min-seok, a spokesman for the South Korean defense ministry, denied the North's accusation that shelling drills had been taking place in the sea near the border since Sunday. In November 2010, North Korea shelled the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong, killing two South Korean marines and two civilians. http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/07/world/asia/koreas-tensions/index.html?hp
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