At a sombre funeral attended by political leaders, top military brass and tearful relatives, hundreds of uniformed troops commemorated the marines killed along with two civilians in the attack on a frontline island Tuesday.

"We will certainly avenge your deaths," Marine commander Lieutenant General Yoo Nak-Joon said at the ceremony for Sergeant Suh Jung-Woo, 22, and Private Moon Kwang-Wook, 20, held in a packed hall at a military hospital near Seoul.

The emotional ceremony came amid the worst crisis in decades on the divided Korean peninsula, triggered by North Korea's bombardment of the small border island of Yeonpyeong, located near their flashpoint maritime border.

Nuclear-powered carrier the USS George Washington and its battle group were heading for waters west of the Korean peninsula for four days of exercises from Sunday, which have also angered China, North Korea's main ally.

Washington stressed that the Yellow Sea manoeuvre is "defensive in nature", was planned before North Korea's attack, and is not aimed against China.

But the United States also says that its display of naval firepower will act as a "deterrent" to the volatile regime of Kim Jong-Il, which has kept the region on edge for years with its nuclear and long-range missile tests.

China has resisted taking sides in the worst flare-up in decades between the Koreas, only generally urging calm after the attack, in which South Korean forces returned artillery fire at North Korean coastal positions.

Beijing was more outspoken in its opposition to the US-South Korean drills.

"We hold a consistent and clear-cut stance on the issue," China's foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in a statement Friday.

"We oppose any party to take any military actions in our exclusive economic zone without permission," it said, referring to the sea area that stretches 200 nautical miles (370 kilometres) from a country's shores.

China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi spoke with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and his South Korean counterpart Friday about the tense situation on the Korean peninsula, the ministry said without giving details.

"Secretary Clinton talked with Chinese foreign minister Yang today and encouraged Beijing to make clear that North Korea's behavior is unacceptable," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley later told reporters.

The Pentagon Friday stressed that "this exercise is not directed at China".

"These operations are defensive in nature and designed to strengthen deterrence against North Korea," said spokesman Darryn James.

North Korea has justified its attacks -- the first shelling of civilians since the 1950-53 Korean War -- as retaliation after South Korea in a drill lobbed shells into what the North considers its own coastal waters.

In the latest of a series of threats of further strikes, the regime on Saturday decried the exercise, with a state body warning on its website that "this is another intolerable military provocation against us".

"It is our military and people's revolutionary mettle and mode of response to counter intruders with merciless strikes," said the official website of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea.

"Our military still keeps the barrels of artillery open and if invaders dare intrude into our territorial land, air and waters, we would take advantage of this opportunity to turn the heartland of enemies into a sea of fire."

The international community has been at a loss over how to deal with North Korea, which has also been blamed for the sinking of a South Korean warship in March in a suspected submarine torpedo attack that killed 46 sailors.

US President Barack Obama has vowed to stand "shoulder-to-shoulder" with ally South Korea -- but both face the difficult choice between a soft response, which they fear may encourage more provocations from Pyongyang, and a tougher response, which carries the risk of military escalation.

Defence strategists have warned that full-scale hostilities on the Korean peninsula would bring a nightmare scenario of conventional, chemical, biological and nuclear warfare that may claim a million lives.

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