PYONGYANG, North Korea — An ominous showdown between North and South Korea was forestalled Monday after the North withheld military retaliation for South Korea’s live-fire artillery drills on an island that the North shelled last month after similar drills.

The North claims the island and its surrounding waters and had threatened “brutal consequences beyond imagination” if the drills went forward. But the North’s official news agency issued a statement Monday night saying it was “not worth reacting” to the exercise, and a statement from the North’s military said, “The world should properly know who is the true champion of peace and who is the real provocateur of a war.”

The apparent pullback created a palpable feeling of relief in South Korea, where many people had been bracing for a showdown.

Many had expected a repeat — if not worse — of the North’s hour-long barrage on Yeonpyeong Island, just eight miles from the North Korean coast, which left two South Korean soldiers and two South Korean civilians dead.