White House plays down threat of imminent North Korea attack South Korean military drills. The White House also appealed to Seoul to avoid taking unilateral action. Photograph: Kim Jae-hwan/AFP/Getty Images The White House sought to lower the temperature of the North Korea crisis on Monday, pointing out that despite Pyongyang's verbal threats to retaliate with force against the imposition of UN sanctions there were no signs of any troop movements that would suggest imminent military action. The Obama administration adopted a note of muted concern, in contrast to the increasingly shrill language emanating from both North and South Korea in recent days. At a White House press conference, President Obama's spokesman Jay Carney stressed that though the US was continuing to monitor the situation diligently, "we are not seeing large-scale military mobilisation and repositioning of [North Korean] forces." Pyongyang's aggressive stance was nothing new, Carney said. This pattern of bellicose rhetoric is not new. It is familiar, we take it very seriously and we take prudent measures in response to it, but it is consistent with past behaviour. Carney made clear that the US posture was designed with both Koreas firmly in mind. While Obama wanted to show the North Korean regime that its provocative behaviour "only isolates them further," the administration was also applying pressure on Seoul to dissuade it from taking any unilateral action. Carney said that the decision to deploy Raptor stealth fighter jets from a base in Japan in joint US-South Korea defence drills on Sunday, as well as two B-2 stealth bombers last week in the dummy bombing of an uninhabited South Korean island, was made with South Korea, a US ally, in mind. It would help to reduce "the chance of miscalculations." He said such actions were a prudent way of reassuring US allies in the region. South Korea had earlier said it would strike back with immediate and overwhelming force if North Korea launched an attack on its territory. Last week North Korea threatened to attack the South and the US in retaliation for UN sanctions introduced after the regime conducted a nuclear weapons test in February. Pyongyang is also angered by the joint US-South Korea defence drills, which are continuing until the end of the month. "[North Korea] will achieve nothing by threats or provocations, which will only further isolate North Korea and undermine international efforts to ensure peace and stability in north-east Asia," the US military command in South Korea said in a statement. A full-scale war is unlikely, but there is clear concern in Seoul about the more realistic threat of a small-scale attack on the South Korean military or a group of islands near the countries' disputed maritime border in the Yellow Sea.