Yeonpyeon: South Korea will go ahead with live firing drills from a disputed island on Monday, local media said, despite threats of attack by Pyongyang and pressure from Russia and China to cancel the exercise.
The drills were delayed from the weekend by bad weather, giving time for an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting to try to calm tensions. But the meeting ended without agreement after more than eight hours of talks, with the five big powers split on whether to publicly blame North Korea for the crisis.
The meeting may resume on Monday but Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said disagreements between the major powers were "unlikely to be bridged".
The last time Seoul conducted live firing drills from Yeonpyeong close to the disputed maritime border off the west coast of the peninsula, Pyongyang shelled the island, killing two civilians and two marines in the worst attack on South Korean territory since the Korean war ended in 1953.
North Korea warned last week that it would strike even harder if the latest drills went ahead. China and Russia have said the exercise should not go ahead, while the United States has backed South Korea's right to hold the drills.
The tension hit Korean markets when they opened on Monday, with the won falling more than one percent to a four-week low against the dollar and stocks also down one percent.
Pyongyang has raised an alert for artillery units along its west coast, Yonhap news agency said, quoting a South Korean government source.
Marines on Yeonpyeong ordered residents into air raid bunkers ahead of the expected start of the drill. Korean TV said residents of nearby islands were also told to take cover.
Both sides have said they will use force to defend what they say is their territory off the west coast, raising international concern that the standoff could quickly spiral out of control.
The 15 Security Council had met behind closed doors to try to agree on a statement that Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said he hoped would send a "restraining signal" to both the North and the South.
Western envoys inside the meeting said the five permanent veto-wielding members were split over whether to blame North Korea for the crisis, as the United States, Britain, and France -- along with Japan -- demand, or to urge both sides to avoid acts that could deepen the crisis, as Russia and China want.
The Chinese, North Korea's staunchest supporters on the council, and Russians reject the idea of assigning blame to Pyongyang, the envoys told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
The U.S., British and French delegations rejected a Russian draft that called for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to send an envoy to Seoul and Pyongyang and urged the two sides to exercise "maximum restraint".
Russia and China then revised the text to make it more acceptable to the Western powers, but this was not enough to win an agreement.
U.S. and Chinese officials have described the situation on the peninsula as "extremely precarious" and a "tinderbox".
The U.N. Secretariat distributed to council members a document on an investigation of the Nov. 23 shelling by the so-called U.N. Command, the U.S.-led military forces in South Korea that monitor compliance with the 1953 Armistice Agreement that ended the Korean War.
That probe concluded the South did not violate the armistice with its Nov. 23 military drills in disputed waters, while the North committed a "deliberate and premeditated attack" that was a "serious violation" of the cease-fire, according to the document, which was obtained by Reuters.
North Korea has called the artillery fire drill by the South a suicidal war move that would trigger all-out conflict on the peninsula and said it would strike back in self-defence.
The South has said if it was attacked in the same manner as last month, it would hit back hard with air power and bombing.
Analysts were sceptical the North would carry through with its threats. The North will likely respond by holding a live-fire drill on its side of the tensely guarded sea border if the South goes ahead with its exercise, they said.
Seoul appears determined to go ahead, anxious to avoid a repeat of domestic criticism in November for its perceived weak response to the shelling of Yeonpyeong.
South Korea's marines plan to test artillery firing from the island targeting its territorial waters to its southwest, the same type of exercise that led to last month's exchange of fire.
Concern mounted on the island among the few residents who remained.
"I see they have to do what they have to do, but the people here want peace and quiet," Dan Choon-nam said after a tearful church service on Sunday. "We want things to be back to how they were."