POCHEON, South Korea – North and South Korea beat the drums of war Thursday, with each threatening the other with immediate retaliation if attacked.

Seoul has staged days of military drills in a show of force meant to deter North Korea, including live-fire exercises earlier this week on a front-line island shelled by the North last month. Angered by the exercises, North Korea threatened Thursday it would launch a "sacred" nuclear war if Seoul hit it and warned that even the smallest intrusion on its territory would bring a devastating response.

The two sides are still technically at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce not a peace treaty, and a U.S. governor who recently made an unofficial diplomatic mission to the North has said the situation on the peninsula is a "tinderbox" and the worst he had ever seen it.

Still, the latest rhetoric seemed likely to be just that, words aimed at stirring pride at home and keeping the rival at bay.

POCHEON, South Korea – North and South Korea beat the drums of war Thursday, with each threatening the other with immediate retaliation if attacked.

Seoul has staged days of military drills in a show of force meant to deter North Korea, including live-fire exercises earlier this week on a front-line island shelled by the North last month. Angered by the exercises, North Korea threatened Thursday it would launch a "sacred" nuclear war if Seoul hit it and warned that even the smallest intrusion on its territory would bring a devastating response.

The two sides are still technically at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce not a peace treaty, and a U.S. governor who recently made an unofficial diplomatic mission to the North has said the situation on the peninsula is a "tinderbox" and the worst he had ever seen it.

Still, the latest rhetoric seemed likely to be just that, words aimed at stirring pride at home and keeping the rival at bay.

Kim told a national meeting in Pyongyang that the North's military will deal "more devastating physical blows" to its enemies if they cross into the North's territory even slightly. He also threatened to "wipe out" South Korea and the U.S. if they start a war, the official Korean Central News Agency said in a dispatch.

North Korea is believed to have enough weaponized plutonium for at least a half-dozen atomic bombs. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in April that the United States knows that the North has "somewhere between one and six nuclear weapons."

While Kim's remarks mentioned South Korea's military drills, it's more telling that they come on the eve of the 19th anniversary of leader Kim Jong Il's appointment as the supreme military commander — a day when Pyongyang will want to rev up patriotic spirit.

Earlier Thursday, South Korea's president vowed a strong response if North Korea attacks again as his military conducted its largest air-and-ground firing drills of the year at training grounds near the tense Korean border.

"I had thought that we could safeguard peace if we had patience, but that wasn't the case," President Lee Myung-bak said during a visit to a front-line army base near the Koreas' eastern land border, according to his office. "Our military must ... make unsparing response if it suffers surprise attacks."

Near the Koreas' land border, South Korean tanks fired artillery and fighter jets zoomed by to drop bombs Thursday, signaling South Korea's determination to demonstrate and hone its military strength at the risk of further escalation with North Korea.

The boom of cannons echoed through the valley, and the hills erupted in smoke at training grounds in mountainous Pocheon about 20 miles (30 kilometers) from the border. Rockets streamed through the air and slammed into the side of a hill as helicopters overhead fired at targets and F-15 jet fighters dropped bombs.

The drills were the armed forces' largest joint firing exercises this year and the biggest-ever wintertime air and ground firing exercises in terms of the number of weapons mobilized and fired, government and army officials said.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson warned in an interview Wednesday that violence could flare anew between the two rivals if the South continues its drills and the North abandons its stated intention of refraining from retaliation.

Exactly one month ago, routine South Korean live-fire drills from Yeonpyeong Island in the Yellow Sea triggered a shower of North Korean artillery that killed two marines and two construction workers. It was the first military attack on a civilian area since the Korean War.

North Korea, which claims the waters around the South Korean-held island lying just seven miles (11 kilometers) from its shores as its territory, accused the South of provoking the exchange by ignoring Pyongyang's warnings against staging the live-fire drills near their disputed maritime border.

China — North Korea's only major ally — called again for restraint on Thursday.

"The current situation remains highly complicated and sensitive," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a regular briefing. "We appeal to the relevant parties to keep calm, exercise restraint, and adopt responsible attitudes and do more to ease the situation and safeguard peace and stability on the peninsula,"

The military tension over the past month has soared, and comes on the heels of the March sinking of a South Korean warship that a Seoul-led international investigation blamed on Pyongyang, but which North Korea denies. Forty-six sailors died.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/12/22/skorea-holds-massive-new-drills-north-attack/#

To bad we have a President who pee's his pants at the word nuclear and is to scared to retalliate appropriatly.

Man.. my gfs parents are brother live in Seoul. Well just about everyone she knows. T_T

I hope they finally get it over with so China can either rise to the top as a nation of peace and help end this peacefully, or China will get froggy and the Nukes will fly! This is China's Tar Baby.

F N Korea. They know full well what will happen when they press the button.

Don't get excited.
It's all bluster.

Not with the "Coward in Cheif" we have. He is probably hiding under his desk shaking back and forth in the fetal position, right now.

Not that I dont think Obama is any more or less of a sell out than any other president I find this laughable being what did Bush do when Korea was Building a bomb? I think he had us bogged down in a war based on Lies did he not?

Being the Pinko Harry Reid and Stinko Nancy Pelosini would't let him do anything.

Seriously? is your memory that short? I sometimes wonder if you just post things without thinking them through. What I remember is that while Bush looked for nonexistent nuclear weapons in
Iraq - as Condoleezza Rice suggested, to ensure that
the next warning did not come as a mushroom cloud - Korea was realy makeing them. Clearly the latest trouble is just another mess Obama has to fix after 8 years of Bush. Realy Bush needs to be on trial for the criminal he is and his criminal negligence while commander and chief

No Bush wanted to hit Iran and N. Korea genious.

Sure he did Label them part of the Axis of evil and then went chaseing ghostes of WMDS in Iraq. No president in modern history has a worse track record than Bush. They exploded a bomb under Bush's watch and being totaly bogged down and bankrupted moraly and financialy in Iraq did nothing.

After they already assembled a bomb. It's no secret Iran is trying to put together an Axis of Evil and North Korea is part of that with Syria and Libya.

Lets hope they all get the bomb brother then our kids wont have to go and fight another war based on lies. We only attack powerless and weak countries. I am all for detante

Obama a coward? HA! He made 101 Predator Strikes in Pakistan at Al Queda and Taliban targets in 18 months of office.....Bush had a total of 45 during his entire 2 terms of office.

Bush was too scared to go into Pakistan to get them basterds.

You've been brain washed, my friend. Need to look at the real stats.

The Dems voted FOR the Iraq war twice!!...They wanted the mess in the middle east more than Bush did.

Obama is still a coward, but I dont think we should be jumping in the middle of this stuff.

Let the Korea's duke it out among themselves!! We dont need another money draining tax burden like this!!~

A program which President started. Not to mention taking Saddam, the Taliban out of power and sending Obama Bin Laden.....Err Osama Bin Laden into the caves.

We have no choice because of treaties and pacts we made.

Oh, we have a choice. We can simply stay out of it. Lots of other countries break their treaties with us, so we can do the same here.

But Obama will try to do something on S. Korea's behalf, while sticking it to the taxpayers here.

10 years ago you were 22.
Why didn't you sign up to fight in Bush's illegal war?

They were shown lies!