It looks like the ROK military is preparing for any possible escalation by North Korea:

North Korea is stepping up naval landing exercises amid growing tensions with South Korea, which is not ruling out an attack on one of its islands, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported on Monday.

The North has conducted shooting drills or used high-speed boats for landing exercises and has banned ships from some areas of the Yellow Sea until the end of July, Yonhap reported.

“North Korea has increased exercises using high-speed amphibious boats. We are not ruling out the possibility that North Korea may try to raid one of the islands,” it quoted an unidentified defence source as saying.

Tensions have been running high for the past week after North Korea tested a nuclear bomb for the second time, launched a series of short-range missiles and warned that it could launch an attack on the South.

South Korea is on heightened alert for a possible repeat of the deadly naval clashes seen in 1999 and 2002 near the tense maritime border area.

A South Korean defence ministry spokesman told AFP on Monday that North Korea had stepped up military activities following its threat of a possible attack on the South.

“North Korean troops have been conducting more drills, especially along the west coast,” the spokesman said.

He declined to confirm a Yonhap report that the North had doubled the storage of ammunition for artillery units and patrol boats along the west coast.   [Channel News]

I’m still convinced that these training exercises along with the short range missile tests are all being used by North Korea as as a deterent to South Korea actually enforcing the PSI.