North Korea warns South over military drill near sea border North Korean soldiers pay respects to the late Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang. Photograph: Kcna/Reuters North Korea will launch "merciless" strikes if South Korea conducts live-fire drills near their disputed sea border, a North Korean officer has said. North Korea did not want a war but its people were ready to "dedicate their blood to defend their inviolable territory," officer Sin Chol Ung of the North's Korean People's Security Forces told the Associated Press. We are monitoring every movement by the South Korean warmongers. If they provoke us, there will be only merciless retaliatory strikes," Sin said. South Korea will stage one-day artillery drills on Monday from frontline islands off the western coast, including one shelled by North Korea in 2010, according to Seoul's joint chiefs of staff. It said South Korea informed North Korea of its training plan on Sunday. Soon after, the North's military issued a statement warning of the strikes and urging all civilians living or working on the islands to evacuate before the drills start. "Such a move of the warlike forces is a premeditated military provocation ... to drive the overall situation on the Korean peninsula into the phase of war," a North Korean western military command said in a statement carried by the official Korean central news agency. The North frequently issues similar rhetoric against South Korea, but the latest warning comes as ties between the Koreas remain tense after the death of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in December. South Korea has barred all of its citizens, except for two private delegations, from visiting to pay respects to Kim, and North Korea has vowed to retaliate. South Korea regularly conducts artillery drills from frontline islands. A drill at one of the five islands, Yeonpyeong, in November 2010 triggered a North Korean artillery bombardment that killed four South Koreans. Pyongyang has accused Seoul of provoking the attack by conducting drills in its territorial waters. In Seoul, an official at the joint chiefs of staff said South Korea's military would go ahead with Monday's two-hour artillery drills and was ready to repel any North Korean provocation. The official said North Korea had not shown any suspicious military activities so far. South Korea also planned joint anti-submarine drills with the US this week, but the training site was further south, he said. About 28,500 US troops are stationed in South Korea as what US and South Korean officials call deterrence against North Korean aggression. "The Lee Myung-bak group of traitors should not forget the lesson taught by the Yeonpyeong Island shelling case," the North's statement said, referring to the South Korean president. The North's warning also comes four days before US and North Korean officials meet in Beijing for talks on the country's nuclear weapons programme. The talks will be the first such bilateral contact since Kim's death on 17 December. The Korean peninsula remains technically at war because the 1950-53 Korean war ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.