North Korea warned of an “all-out military strike” to destroy South Korean loudspeakers and other propaganda tools along their fortified border, according to the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency.

South Korea’s preparation for psychological warfare, is a “direct declaration of a war” against the North, the general staff of the communist state’s military said today in a statement on KCNA. The North’s military retaliation may turn Seoul into “a sea of flame,” the statement said.

The South has already installed loudspeakers in 11 places along the border and is attempting to set up electronic displays, according to the statement.

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The U.S. aircraft carrier USS George Washington will participate in a joint naval exercise with South Korea next week in the Yellow Sea, the same waters west of the Korean peninsula where North Korea is accused of sinking a South Korean warship last March, ABC News has learned.

A U.S. official said the carrier, which operates from its home port in Japan, “will be sent to the waters off South Korea within coming days to participate in joint exercises” with the South Korean navy.

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The White House betting is that the latest crisis, stemming from the March attack, will also abate without much escalation. But there is more than a tinge of doubt. The big risk, as always, is what happens if the North Koreans make a major miscalculation. (It wouldn’t be their first. Sixty years ago, Mr. Kim’s father, Kim Il-sung, thought the West wouldn’t fight when he invaded the South. The result was the Korean War.)

What’s more, the dynamic does feel different from recent crises. The South has a hardline government whose first instinct was to cut off aid to the North, not offer it new bribes. At the same time, the North is going through a murky, ill-understood succession crisis.

And President Obama has made it clear he intends to break the old cycle. “We’re out of the inducements game,” one senior administration official, who would not discuss internal policy discussions on the record, said last week. “For 15 years at least, the North Koreans have been in the extortion business, and the U.S. has largely played along. That’s over.”

That may change the North’s behavior, but it could backfire.

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North Korea said on Friday the peninsula was heading toward war and it was ready to tear up all agreements with the South after it accused the reclusive state of torpedoing a navy ship near their disputed border.

South Korea said on Thursday it had overwhelming evidence that a North Korean submarine had entered its waters in March and attacked the Cheonan corvette, killing 46 sailors.

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South Koreans exulted last week in Kim Yu-na’s matchless performance in Vancouver. So, too, on Sunday, at Yoido Full Gospel Church, where the figure skater, a Roman Catholic, wasn’t mentioned by name but everyone knew whom the pastor was talking about when he lifted up the country’s Olympic athletes in prayer.

Yoido Full Gospel is the mega-est of megachurches. With a membership of more than 850,000, it bills itself as the world’s largest Christian congregation, and that’s probably right. At the 11 o’clock service last Sunday, there were more people in the 120-singer choir than in the entire congregation of the country church I attend in New England.

The church stands on an island in the Han River in central Seoul, not far from the National Legislature. The main sanctuary holds 10,000 people. Nearby are several church-owned buildings, including a high-rise filled with offices, meeting rooms and banquet halls. There are satellite churches elsewhere in Seoul and around the country.

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North Korea escalated its vitriol against South Korea and the United States on Wednesday with warnings of a “powerful military strike” if any North Korean ships were stopped or searched as part of an American-led operation to intercept vessels suspected of carrying unconventional weapons.

South Korea agreed to join the operation after North Korea tested a nuclear device on Monday, its second nuclear test in three years. The North had earlier warned the South not to participate in the operation, known as the Proliferation Security Initiative.

“We consider this a declaration of war against us,” North Korea said in a statement carried by its official news agency, KCNA. “Any hostile act against our peaceful vessels, including search and seizure, will be considered an unpardonable infringement on our sovereignty, and we will immediately respond with a powerful military strike.”

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