South Korea braces for next move

Eleanor Hall is the voice of ABC Radio at lunchtime. She hosts the ABC's daily newshour, The World Today, which delivers national and international news and analysis to radio and online audiences nationally and throughout the region.

ELEANOR HALL: Now to the Korean Peninsula, and South Korea has now ordered the evacuation of the islands near the border with the North.

Yesterday’s North Korean artillery attack killed two South Korean marines, generated international outrage and ratcheted up fears of a major conflict between the two Koreas.

Around 50 North Korean shells hit a small island near the border, setting houses on fire. South Korea responded with its own artillery attack.

Our correspondent Stephen McDonnel joins me now from the South Korean capital Seoul.

Stephen you just arrived in Seoul - just how tense is the situation there?

STEPHEN MCDONNEL: You know, the television of course has rolling coverage of this and you see people standing around televisions watching the coverage, especially interviews with people who were on the island when the shells hit.

You know, lots of descriptions of how shocked people were, just going about their daily lives in these small island communities and then bang - shells started going off in their dozens, you know, houses catching fire and quite chaotic.

But on the other hand in downtown Seoul where I'm standing there's also a degree to which life is going on.

I mean I'm looking around now, there are office workers standing outside their towers have cigarettes and talking. I mean no doubt they're chatting about the events going on near the border, but life does seem to be going on here.

And there isn't a sense of like panic along the lines of you know, people stockpiling food or water or anything like that. I don't think people expect this to escalate into a, you know, a full scale war.

But you know, we're only about an hours drive from the border here so any conflict like this really does set the whole city on a bit of a knife edge.

ELEANOR HALL: And the government has ordered the evacuation of these islands, tell us about that.

STEPHEN MCDONNEL: Well around the sort of west coast, north-west coast of South Korea there are all these small islands which are quite close to what North Korea considers the sea border and this is where this all broke out in the first place.

The South Koreans are having their exercises in the sea there and firing shells I suppose into what the North Koreans say is their sea.

And I suppose that the officials have just decided that is the South Korean government officials, it's too dangerous to have people on these small and remote island communities so they're bringing them in via ferry.

And again we're seeing interviews at Incheon port as people get off these ferries arriving back in from these sort of outer islands off the north-west coast of South Korea.

ELEANOR HALL: Well the North Koreans are blaming the South for conducting military exercises close to the North Korean border.

Are South Koreans blaming their own government?

STEPHEN MCDONNEL: Well it's quite split here in terms of what people think should be done about North Korea and some people certainly do blame the government of Lee Myung Bak for building up the tension in recent years.

He's taken what he considers a sort of tougher response, a harder line on North Korea than his predecessors were and certainly a fair proportion of the South Korean population think that this has been a mistake.

But I don't think that they're directly blaming him or his government for this shelling because I mean really it's just such a problem, how does South Korea deal with North Korea when you have these kind of unexpected events just coming out of nowhere like you know the sinking of a ship with you know 40 plus sailors dead, you know, dozens of shells coming across the border hitting villages.

So really they're in a bit of a bind as to what they can do about North Korea here.

ELEANOR HALL: Stephen McDonnel, our correspondent in Seoul; thankyou.