Protesters burn portraits of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in Seoul, South Korea, on Wednesday.
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SEOUL — North Korea on Wednesday accused Seoul of "reckless military provocation" — a day after an artillery attack left at least four people dead on a South Korean island.
A U.S. aircraft carrier group also set off for Korean waters, a move likely to enrage Pyongyang and unsettle its ally, China. The nuclear-powered USS George Washington, which carries 75 warplanes and has a crew of over 6,000, left a naval base south of Tokyo and would join exercises with South Korea in the Yellow Sea from Sunday, U.S. officials in Seoul said.
President Barack Obama had earlier pledged to "stand shoulder to shoulder" with South Korea .
"This exercise is defensive in nature," U.S. Forces Korea said in a statement. "While planned well before yesterday's unprovoked artillery attack, it demonstrates ... our commitment to regional stability through deterrence."
The North's official KCNA news agency said South Korea was driving the peninsula to the "brink of war by pursuing its policy of confrontation" and postponing humanitarian aid. The dispatch did not refer to the planned military drills involving the U.S.
Slideshow: Daily life in North Korea (on this page) Pyongyang said Tuesday's attack was in reaction to military drills conducted by South Korea in the area at the time but Seoul said it had not been firing at the North. North Korea does not recognize the western maritime border drawn unilaterally by the U.N. at the close of the 1950-1953 Korean War.
Seoul responded by unleashing its own barrage from K-9 155 mm self-propelled howitzers and scrambling fighter jets. Officials in Seoul said there could be considerable North Korean casualties.
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The South Korean Coast Guard pulled the bodies of two men, believed in their 60s, from a destroyed construction site on the tiny island of Yeonpyeong.
The North's artillery barrages targeting the island Tuesday also killed at least two South Korean marines and wounded 18 other people in what U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called one of the "gravest incidents" in more than 50 years.
The U.S. and Japan urged China to do more to rein in North Korea.
Video: U.S. Pentagon officials: 'No one is looking for war' (on this page) Beijing will not be pleased by the deployment of the aircraft carrier and will not respond to such pressure, said Xu Guangyu, a retired major-general in the People's Liberation Army who now works for a government-run arms control organization.
"China will not welcome the U.S. aircraft carrier joining the exercises, because that kind of move can escalate tensions and not relieve them," he said.
China has long propped up the Pyongyang leadership, worried that a collapse of the North could bring instability to its own borders and also wary of a unified Korea that would be dominated by the U.S., the key ally of the South.
Seoul, a city of more than 10 million, was bustling as normal on Wednesday , a sunny autumn day, although developments were being closely watched by office workers on TV and in newspapers.
"We are concerned that a war might break out," said Oh Duk-man, who was walking in downtown Seoul.
In Young-joo, another pedestrian, called for a strong response. "Our government has to react very strongly against North Korea after they invaded us in such a daring way," she said.
Video: N. Korea flexing muscles amid power shift (on this page) Editorials stepped up pressure on President Lee Myung-bak to respond more toughly than he has to past provocations by the North and two small groups held anti-North Korea protests.
Although U.S. officials said the joint exercise was scheduled before the attack by North Korea, it was reminiscent of a crisis in 1996 when then President Bill Clinton sent an aircraft carrier group through the Taiwan Strait after Beijing test-fired missiles into the channel between the mainland and Taiwan.
"We're in a semi state of war," South Korean coastguard Kim Dong-jin told Reuters in the port city of Incheon where many residents of Yeonpyeong island fled in panic as the bombardment triggered a fire storm.
'We've lost everything' "My house was burned to the ground," said Cho Soon-ae, 47, who was among 170 or so evacuated from Yeonpyeong on Wednesday.
"We've lost everything," she said weeping, holding on to her sixth-grade daughter, as she landed at Incheon.
"I heard the sound of artillery, and I felt that something was flying over my head," said Lim Jung-eun, a 36 year-old housewife who escaped Yeonpyeong island with her three children, one of whom, a 9-month-old baby girl, she carried on her back. "Then the mountain caught on fire."
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