South Korea's military has not spotted any unusual activity from North Korea's armed forces following the North's walkout on inter-Korean military talks this week, but is closely monitoring the situation, officials said Friday.
The first inter-Korean contact since the North's bombardment of a South Korean island last November collapsed on Wednesday as the two sides failed to agree on the agenda and other procedural issues for a higher-level meeting to reduce tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
North Korea has reacted angrily to the collapse of working-level military talks, saying it feels "no need" for further talks with "scoundrels" in South Korea. Such angry responses raised speculation in the South that Pyongyang might provoke Seoul again.
"Currently, we have not detected any meaningful movements from North Korean military," said an official at the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). "The North Korean military has carried out winter exercises as usual.
"But we are doing everything possible to ensure our combat readiness to deal with any contingency," the JCS official said.
The JCS has also observed that the North's military was believed to have conducted live-fire artillery drills inside its territory since last December and a hovercraft infiltration drill near the tense Yellow Sea border, according to a military source.
This week's inter-Korean military meeting at the border village of Panmunjom ended in hostility as the North's delegates abruptly stormed out of the meeting room, angered by the South's demand for an explicit apology in connection with the two military provocations last year, Seoul's officials said.
North Korea launched an unprovoked artillery attack on Yeonpyeong Island, killing two civilians and two marines. The bombardment came eight months after a North Korean torpedo sank a South Korean warship and killed 46 sailors.
At the talks, North Korea reiterated that it had nothing to do with the sinking of the Cheonan warship and that its shelling of Yeonpyeong was legitimate because it was provoked by the South's live-fire drill near the island.