South Korea on Thursday announced plans for a live-fire artillery exercise on Yeonpyeong island, its first on the frontline island since a similar drill unleashed a deadly North Korean bombardment there.

The South's military said guns would be aimed away from the North as usual during the drill this month, but added it would respond strongly if provoked.

"We will react firmly and strongly to any fresh North Korean provocations," Lee Boong-Woo, spokesman for the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a briefing.

The military said members of the US-led United Nations Command would observe the one-day exercise, to be staged some time between December 18 and 21 depending on the weather "and other relevant conditions".

The Command, which supervises the armistice that ended the 1950-53 war, said about 20 US soldiers would attend the drill to provide medical and communications services and help with intelligence analysis.

The military has strengthened defences on the island by deploying surface-to-air missiles, more self-propelled howitzers and 130-millimeter multiple launch rocket systems, Lee said.

Some 120 residents still on the island will be advised to leave before the drill starts, he said, adding that those who want to stay will be taken to shelters. Two civilians were killed in the November bombardment by the North.

The nuclear-armed North insists the South's forces prompted its November 23 attack by firing shells into North Korean waters during a drill on the island near the disputed Yellow Sea border.

But the South says the North's attack was a deliberate provocation planned long in advance.

Seoul also announced on Thursday a major reshuffle to strengthen the military after fierce criticism of its perceived feeble response to the attack.

The shelling, the first of a civilian area in the South since the war, killed four people including two marines, damaged dozens of homes and triggered a regional crisis.

Marines on the island fired back at the North's artillery batteries but did not call in air strikes.

Defence Minister Kim Kwan-Jin, appointed after his predecessor resigned in the wake of the shelling, has vowed to use air power if there is any recurrence.

The North's state KCNA news agency, the mouthpiece of the Pyongyang government, reacted with an angry broadside accusing the minister of acting "reckless, like a puppy knowing no fear of a tiger".

It dismissed Kim's comments as "a spasm of a war maniac keen to ignite a war by increasing the tension on the Korean Peninsula".

The South's defence ministry on Thursday announced promotions for 111 officers — 75 from the army, 14 from the navy and 22 from the air force.

"With this reshuffle, the military will strive to build strong armed forces that can fight and win and ensure firm combat-readiness," it said in a statement.

A new army commander, General Kim Sang-Ki, took office Thursday after his predecessor General Hwang Eui-Don quit over a controversial property investment.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has inspected a military unit, KCNA said Thursday in the first report of such a visit since the November 23 shelling.

Kim was "greatly satisfied" to hear that its members are "keeping themselves highly vigilant against the aggression moves of the US imperialists and their stooges", it said.

The newspaper of North Korea's ruling communist party, Rodong Sinmun, meanwhile blamed current tensions on what it called the "policy of confrontation" by the conservative government in Seoul.

President Lee Myung-Bak dropped a "sunshine" engagement and aid policy and linked major assistance to nuclear disarmament, a stance which enraged the North.

"The South Korean authorities should roll back their treacherous 'policy towards the north' at once as they bring the dark clouds of nuclear war to hang over the peninsula," Rodong Sinmun said.

earlier related report

S.Korea holds mass drill amid concern at North's nuke plans
Seoul (AFP) Dec 15, 2010 –

Air-raid sirens wailed and city traffic halted Wednesday as South Korea staged its biggest-ever civil defence drill, amid high tensions with North Korea and a US warning about Pyongyang's nuclear programme.

Pavements in Seoul and other cities quickly emptied as pedestrians scurried into buildings and subway stations during the 15-minute exercise, the most extensive since a civil defence law was passed in 1975.

The military said 12 jet fighters were mobilised, with one overflying the capital of 10 million people, to simulate air strikes by the North.

Some Seoul residents found it hard to take the exercise seriously in a gleaming modern city which has been at peace since the end of the 1950-53 war.

"People don't care about these exercises because we think the North Koreans will never hit Seoul," said businessman Choi Duk-Soo, calling for more realistic drills.

But the National Emergency Management Agency said the situation is grave after the North's deadly artillery attack on a border island on November 23 — the first shelling of a civilian area in the South since the war.

"Public concern has been growing over North Korea's provocations," it said in a statement, citing continued military threats, high tensions in the Yellow Sea and the possibility of a third nuclear test by Pyongyang.

The North's November 12 disclosure to visiting US experts of an apparently operational uranium enrichment plant sparked international concern that it may soon have a new source of bomb-making material.

It says this is part of a peaceful atomic energy programme. But US experts say the plant could easily be reconfigured to produce weapons-grade uranium to augment the country's plutonium stockpile.

The US State Department said Tuesday the North has "at least one other" uranium enrichment site apart from the one disclosed at the Yongbyon complex.

"This remains a significant area of concern," said spokesman Philip Crowley.

The New York Times, citing anonymous US administration officials, said the new facility was "significantly more advanced" than work done by Iran.

South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper, quoting intelligence sources, said the North had dug a tunnel more than 500 metres deep at its nuclear test site in possible preparation for another test.

"If progress goes on at the current pace, the North will have dug a cave one kilometre deep, the depth where it is possible to conduct a nuclear test, between March and May next year," one official was quoted as saying.

Diplomats are touring the region to discuss a response both to the artillery attack which killed four people and the potential new nuclear threat.

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, at a meeting Monday with his visiting North Korean counterpart Pak Ui-Chun, expressed "deep concern" about the new uranium capability.

China, the North's sole major ally, has called for a new meeting of six-party envoys to resolve the latest crisis on the peninsula.

But the United States, Japan and South Korea say a return to negotiations at this point could be seen as rewarding the North's aggression.

They want China, which has failed publicly to condemn its ally for the island attack, to take a tougher line.

US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg and other US officials have left for Beijing and are expected to press it to take tougher action.

"We hope that China will work with us to send a clear, unmistakable message to North Korea that they have to demonstrate a seriousness of purpose and end their provocative actions," US ambassador to South Korea Kathleen Stephens told a Seoul lunch meeting.

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