SOUTH KOREA’S minister for defence has handed in his resignation to the country’s president, just two days after North Korea’s attack on a Southern island that killed two marines and another two civilians.

Kim Tae-young had come under heavy criticism in the wake of the attack, and in the wake of last March’s sinking of a South Korean submarine in which 46 of the country’s soldiers were killed.

Kim had faced significant public outcry, CNN reports, after the March sinking – with many complaining that North Korea, who is blamed for the sinking but has not taken responsibility, should not be able to scupper a Southern vessel given Seoul’s technological capabilities.

The minister had tendered his resignation at the time, but the president Lee Myung-bak had not made a decision on it until yesterday, when public sentiment once again turned against him.

The North, meanwhile, has said it will continue to launch attacks on the South if it continues its US-backed “reckless military provocation”.

State news agency KCNA accused the South of sparking the conflict by itself firing missiles from within Northern waters, and spoke of “the crafty and vicious nature of the enemy’s provocation.”

China has refused to take a significant stance on the conflict, however, resisting global pressure – most notably from the United States – to try and talk Pyongyang into backing down.

Barack Obama is later expected to call China’s president Hu Jintao in a hope to prompt a Chinese condemnation of the attack, while the North continues to pledge further attacks if the South refuses, itself, to back down.