About 3,500 U.S. soldiers from the 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division began their nine-month rotation in South Korea and formally took responsibility for the Army’s mission to deter North Korea during a ceremony at Camp Casey, roughly 15 miles from the border with the communist regime.

The U.S. Army reopened the headquarters of its rotational brigade in South Korea after a renovation aimed at improving conditions for soldiers stationed near the border with North Korea.

South Korean President Lee Jae-myung said Sunday that his administration would usher in “a new era of reconciliation” with North Korea.

North Korea says it has repaired and relaunched a naval destroyer that capsized during a failed launch attempt, but defense experts remain skeptical about the regime’s claim of a quick recovery.

North Korea stopped broadcasting propaganda along the inter-Korean border, hours after the South took the first step by silencing its own loudspeakers — a move aimed at easing tensions.

The 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division out of Fort Carson, Colo., arrived in South Korea late last month as the Army’s latest rotational unit tasked with deterring regional threats for the next nine months.

North Korea appears to be constructing a new building at its Yongbyon nuclear complex and continues to produce nuclear material, the head of the U.N.’s atomic watchdog said.

South Korea has stopped using its propaganda loudspeakers along the northern border in an effort to reduce tensions between the two countries, the military said.

A South Korean court handed a suspended sentence to a North Korean defector who tried to cross the border back into the North using a stolen bus, according to local media.

A former Marine Corps historian has taken charge of U.S. Marines in South Korea in one of several leadership changes taking place this month across the peninsula.