Seoul  - North Korea on Wednesday accused South Korea of deliberately moving a border marker northward amid a backdrop of rising tension on the Korean Peninsula.

The incident was a "serious military provocation," Pyongyang's state-run Korean Central News Agency said. South Korea's military general staff rejected the accusation and accused its communist neighbour of "unnecessarily raising tension" by making false claims.

In the agency's report, North Korea threatened "measures of self-defence" should Seoul not move the marker back several dozen metres to its original position. According to South Korean officials, more than 1,290 border markers set the demarcation line between the two countries.

More than 1 million soldiers from both sides face each other at their heavily militarized border. North and South Korea are technically still at war because a ceasefire, and no peace treaty, ended the 1950-53 Korean War.

Relations have deteriorated over the past months with North Korea testing what the United States, Japan and South Korea said was a long-rang ballistic missile and pulling out of talks to end its nuclear weapons programme.

On Tuesday, the first direct talks between the governments of North and South Korea in more than a year took place but lasted around 20 minutes, South Korean officials said.

There were no details as to what had been discussed at the meeting, which took place in the North Korean border city of Kaesong at an industrial park operated jointly by the two neighbours. (dpa)