The U.S. and South Korea raised the alert level for their security forces on Thursday, a day after North Korea declared it was scrapping the 1953 armistice that brought a halt to the Korean War.

A South Korean soldier stands at a guard post near the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas in Paju, about 45 km (28 miles) north of Seoul, May 28, 2009. North Korea looks certain to face U.N. sanctions for this week’s nuclear test, and South Korea raised the military alert level for the peninsula after the reclusive communist state warned it was ready to attack. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

“Surveillance over the North will be stepped up, with more aircraft and personnel mobilized,” said Won Tae-jae, a South Korean defense ministry spokesman.
The alert level, the highest since North Korea’s first-ever nuclear test in 2006, comes just days after Pyongyang carried out its second nuclear test and a series of missile launches in violation of a UN resolution.

The prospect of a naval clash also increased after Pyongyang threatened a military response to any attempt by U.S.-led forces to intercept its vessels off the Korean peninsula’s west coast.

The U.S. has stationed troops in South Korea since the end of the Korean War in 1953 and has about 28,500 soldiers there now.

Won said the raised alert level meant more air surveillance, intelligence analysts and other intelligence-collecting measures would be deployed to watch the North.

This is the fourth time since 1982 that the alert level has been upgraded to stage two, the last being in October 2006 following the North’s first nuclear test.

“We are maintaining a tight defense posture to prevent the North’s military provocations,” added Won. “The military will deal sternly with provocative acts.”

Surveillance is to be focused along the Demilitarized Zone which divides the peninsula, the Joint Security Area at the border truce village in Panmunjom and the disputed sea border in the Yellow Sea known as the Northern Limit Line, he said.

Pyongyang’s latest rhetoric was prompted by Seoul’s decision to join the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative aimed at stopping and inspecting ships suspected of transporting banned weapons, including nuclear technology.

On Wednesday, the U.S. secretary of state reaffirmed Washington’s commitments to allies Japan and South Korea in the face of nuclear and military threats by the North.

Hillary Clinton told reporters the U.S. would honor its treaties to defend them.

“I want to underscore the commitments that the United States has and intends always to honor, for the defense of South Korea and Japan,” she said in Washington.

Clinton said there would be consequences for Pyongyang’s act of defiance but said the door to negotiations was still open and that she hoped the North would return to talks on abandoning its nuclear program.

“We hope that there will be an opportunity for North Korea to come back into a framework of discussions within the six-party talks,” she said.

Under the six-party talks that involve the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the US, North Korea agreed in 2005 to abandon its nuclear program.

It has subsequently conducted two nuclear tests, one in October 2006 and a stronger one this week.

Key world powers have proposed a range of expanded UN sanctions in response to the latest test as well as measures to give teeth to existing bans and ship searches that have been widely ignored and poorly enforced, Western diplomats said on May 27.

UN Security Council members have agreed in principle to punish the North for exploding a second device in defiance of a UN resolution imposed after its previous test.

South Korea’s financial markets, which had fallen in the wake of news of the nuclear test on Monday, rose early on Thursday although traders said investors were still nervous about what other steps the North might take to raise tensions in the economically powerful region.

North Korea has kept up its steady string of strident rhetoric, saying in its official media that “a minor accidental clash could lead to nuclear war.”

-Aljazeera