THE UNITED STATES is to join South Korea in holding joint military drills beginning this weekend, underlining its military support to Seoul in the aftermath of North Korea’s armed attack on a Southern island yesterday.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula remain high in the wake of yesterday’s attack, which killed two South Korean soldiers and a number of civilians when 200 artillery shells were fired by the North during a routine military drill on Yeonpyeong Island, near the Korean maritime border.

The BBC reports that 75 American warplanes have left a base in Tokyo bound for Korean waters, where joint exercises will begin on Sunday and continue until at least Wednesday.

Last night Barack Obama condemned the ‘unprovoked’ attack, and pledged his country’s support to South Korea, indicating that the United States would likely take an active part on the Southern side if the conflict develops – as many fear – into a wholescale armed conflict.

He had also appealed to China to use its alliance with Pyongyang to pacify North Korea, but Bloomberg reports that the call is likely to be spurned.

The North has condemned the confirmation of the US-Southern alliance, with national news agency KCNA accusing the US of “desperately driving the south Korean bellicose forces into confrontation with the DPRK [North], and thereby pushing the situation on the peninsula to an extreme phase.

“The moves stepped up by the U.S. to tighten the alliance under the fictitious ‘threat’ from the DPRK are nothing but a serious military provocation as they drive the situation into an extreme phase.”

South Korean citizens have taken to the streets burning North Korean flags, demanding “strong revenge on North Korea for provoking us” and waving banners seeking “vengeance” for the attack.

The public north of the border remain largely unaware of the attack, meanwhile, with North Korean TV making few references to it and with the official state YouTube news channel making no reference to it.