North Korea is ratcheting up the rhetoric after the military confrontation. It is calling South Korea a puppet group, saying that South Korea had been carrying out war exercises near the island, and that's why it decided to respond.
It said it had called on South Korea to stop the shelling. And that's when North Korea intervened. It's saying that any more provocation from South Korea will be met with military muscle, that they will respond with military might
and there will be all-out confrontation if there is more provocation from South Korea.
South Korean officials, of course, have been bunkered down themselves, looking at just how they can respond to this, calling for calm, not wanting to provoke the situation, but also saying that they can't respond just with words.
Watching on, of course, other parties in the region. China and the United States in talks right now. The U.S. envoy, Stephen Bosworth, has been in the region trying to look at a way , way through, a way forward, with North Korea.
Watching on warily as well is Japan. It has its own intense relationship with North Korea. North Korea in the past has talked about being able to fire missiles, missiles directly to Tokyo. Now standing here at the port of Incheon, about 70 kilometers from the island itself. We've seen people being evacuated who were there when the attack actually took place. They have been coming ashore, many of them elderly, saying they are shocked and they are saddened, one elderly lady saying that she had to leave all of her possessions behind.
So, right now, a very tense situation, always volatile, it is right now on a knife edge.
