South Korea Starts Naval Drills Near the North's Coast SEOUL, South Korea - South Korean marines began live-fire exercises around five islands close to the southern coast of North Korea on Monday as the North warned South Korean villagers there to evacuate or take cover because it might retaliate with artillery attacks. Many of the 8,700 civilians living in the islands fled to bomb shelters while others stayed at home, island authorities said. Using megaphones, civil servants escorted villagers to bunkers and schools behind hills facing the North. The islands are within the range of North Korea's coastal artillery, which attacked one of them, Yeonpyeong, in November 2010, killing two marines and two civilians. The one-day exercise and the North's threat came amid fears that the North Korean regime, which is going through a sensitive power transition, might stage a military provocation against the South to use heightened tensions with the outside world to inspire a sense of crisis and boost internal unity at home. Following the death of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, in December, his son and heir, Kim Jong-un, is consolidating his grip on power in Pyongyang. Analysts in the region were closely watching how Mr. Kim's attempts to assert his own authority -- so far depending heavily on the personality cult surrounding his father and grandfather, the North's founding president, Kim Il-sung -- might affect North Korea's relations with its neighbors. The new leader casts himself as a faithful follower of his father's "songun," or military-first, policy through which Kim Jong-il often let his hard-line military play a central role in decision-making. The South Korean exercise came three days before American and North Korean officials were to meet in Beijing for the first senior-level talks since October. Washington was trying to persuade North Korea to suspend operations at its uranium-enrichment plant and return to six-nation talks on ending its nuclear weapons program. The Beijing meeting on Thursday will give the Americans the first serious opportunity to judge Pyongyang's intentions since Kim Jong-il's death. "If the puppet war maniacs of the South start playing with fire first, it will not avoid a punishment 1,000 times worse than the shelling of Yeonpyeong," the North said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. We are ready both for a skirmish and for a full-scale war. North Korea claims the waters around the five South Korean islands, which are patrolled by South Korean warships, and seldom fails to vow "merciless" retaliation when the South Korean military conducts exercises there. The navies of the two Koreans fought skirmishes in the waters in 1999, 2002 and 2009. The North Korean barrage in November 2010 prompted the South Korean artillery in Yeonpyeong to launch a counterattack on gun positions on the North Korean shore. South Korea has since beefed up arms and military exercises in the area. The exercise on Monday involved K-9 artillery pieces and attack helicopters. South Korea informed Pyongyang of the training plan on Sunday. Soon after, North Korea called the drills a "premeditated military provocation" tantamount to a "declaration of war." It urged civilians living or working on the islands to evacuate. Seoul said it would hit back with air power if the North carried out its threats. In recent weeks, North Korea has escalated its rhetoric, targeting a series of joint military drills planned by South Korea and the United States, which also began a five-day joint anti-submarine drill in the Yellow Sea on Monday, though officials said it was taking place further south from the disputed border with North Korea. They strengthened such a drill after Seoul accused Pyongyang of torpedoing a South Korean warship with the loss of 46 lives in the Yellow Sea in March 2010. The North denied it sank the ship. The American and South Korean militaries also begin their major annual drill known as Key Resolve on Feb. 27. Separately, a joint air, ground and naval field training exercise known as Foal Eagle will be held from March 1 to April 30. About 28,500 American troops are stationed in South Korea. Meanwhile, North Korea announced that its ruling Workers" Party of Korea was convening a representatives" meeting in mid-April. Although it did not reveal the agenda of the upcoming conference, such a meeting was widely expected to take steps designed to bolster Kim Jong-un's authority.