North and South Korea have agreed to hold high-level negotiations, retracting from what appeared to be an imminent military showdown as their armed forces faced off at their common border while on high alert.

The Saturday agreement on holding the talks, which are to take place in the border truce village of Panmunjom, emerged just hours prior to the expiration of a deadline set by Pyongyang for Seoul to block loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts across the border or face military action, AFP reported.

According to the report, the four negotiators, two from each side, will include South Korea’s presidential National Security Adviser Kim Kwan-Jin and the figure widely regarded as North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un's number two, Hwang Pyong-So.

The development came as both Koreas had reportedly braced for a military confrontation as the 0830 GMT deadline set by the North was ticking down.

This is while South Korea’s presidential Blue House in the capital, Seoul, announced that the talks were set to start at 6:00 pm local time (0900 GMT).

Seoul, meanwhile, appeared adamant that it would not comply with Pyongyang's demand for turning off the loudspeakers that were blasting provocative propaganda messages into North Korea for the past week.

Moreover, the North Korean Foreign Ministry warned on Saturday that the situation had "reached the brink of war" and was "hardly controllable" as the nation’s People's Army (KPA) announced moving into a "fully armed, wartime state" on the orders of Kim Jong-Un.

There are nearly 30,000 US military forces stationed permanently in South Korea, and its top commander on Saturday reiterated Washington's vow to rush to the defense of its ally.

The Korean Peninsula has been locked in a cycle of military rhetoric since the Korean War, which lasted from 1950 to 1953 and ended in an armistice. No peace deal has been signed since then, suggesting that Pyongyang and Seoul remain technically at war.