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Andrei Lankov, an expert on the region at Kookmin University in Seoul, believed the six-party talks would resume "sooner or later" but suggested they were largely irrelevant to the current crisis, because the real question was whether and when South Korea and the US would provide more aid to the North. "This is a protection racket – you pay the local toughs, and if you don't your windows are going to be broken," he said.

Relations on the peninsula deteriorated sharply when Lee took office in 2008 and cut off free-flowing aid to the North. But Tuesday's attack marked a new level of hostility. The North said that civilian deaths "if true … [are] very regrettable", but blamed the South for using its citizens as human shields. It also accused the US of setting up Tuesday's incident to justify today's drills.

The drills are the largest of their kind yet, according to the South's Yonhap news agency, involving an aircraft carrier carrying 75 planes and at least four other warships. But US military officials said the training was routine and no live-fire exercises were planned. According to South Korean media they are taking place far south of the disputed maritime border.

Pyongyang's National Peace Committee said in a statement that the manoeuvres were creating "a state of ultra-emergency". It also renewed its threat of "merciless counter-military strikes", although it often makes similar warnings ahead of such exercises.

Yonhap said North Korea had moved surface-to-surface missiles to frontline areas, but military and government officials said they could not comment.

"It is impossible to confirm the report as it is classified as a military secret," one told Reuters.

An unidentified government source also told Yonhap that the North had deployed surface-to-air missiles along its western coastline, apparently targeting fighting jets near the disputed Yellow Sea border.

Yesterday, South Korea's marine commander vowed "thousand-fold" revenge if the North attacked again.

Earlier today the South Korean government ordered journalists to leave Yeonpyeong for safety reasons, but bad weather forced it to abort an attempted evacuation, leaving about 400 people there.

Comic actor Leslie Nielsen, star of a string of madcap spoof movies including Airplane! and The Naked Gun, died of complications from pneumonia in Florida on Sunday, his spokesman said. He was 84.

Nielsen is probably best known for playing the bumbling cop Lieutenant Frank Drebin in the Naked Gun franchise, but enjoyed a movie and television career spanning more than 60 years.

The spokesman said Nielsen died in a hospital near his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, surrounded by his wife, Barbaree, and friends at 5.34 pm EST.

Born in Regina, Saskatchewan, the son of a Canadian mounted policeman, Nielsen served stints as an aerial gunner in the air force and as a radio disc jockey before studying acting in Toronto and then in New York City.

He got his first big break in 1950 with a Studio One television appearance, and went to Hollywood in 1954 to star in the film The Vagabond King.

For the first 30 years of his career, he built his reputation playing authority figures such as the captain of the ill-fated cruise ship in The Poseidon Adventure. But later generations got to know the actor primarily for his deadpan performances in comedies such as 1980's Airplane! and the Naked Gun trilogy, which ran from 1988 to 1994.

As Dr Rumack in Airplane!, Nielsen won fans among the younger generation for inane non sequiturs delivered with a straight face. "Can you fly this plane, and land it?" he asks a passenger. "Surely, you can't be serious," comes the answer. "I am serious, and don't call me Shirley," Rumack replies.

The Naked Gun franchise had its origins in the short-lived 1982 TV show Police Squad. After it was cancelled, creators Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker and David Zucker – who had previously worked with Nielsen on Airplane! – turned it into a feature packed with slapstick action and double-entendres.

Drebin beat up the Ayatollah Khomeini and scrubbed the birthmark from Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev's head. The cast was rounded out by George Kennedy as Drebin's partner, and OJ Simpson as their hapless colleague.

In the 1991 sequel, Naked Gun 2-1/2: The Smell of Fear, the villain played by Robert Goulet tells an unannounced Drebin he did not see his name on the guest list. "Nothing to be embarrassed about. I sometimes go by my maiden name," Drebin replies.

The final film, 1994's The Naked Gun 33-1/3: The Final Insult saw Drebin try to avert a disaster during the Academy Awards and go undercover in a penitentiary. An inmate asks where his prison number is. "It's unlisted," Drebin says. That film marked Anna Nicole Smith's first big role.

Nielsen also appeared in the 1996 spy spoof Spy Hard as Agent WD-40, and in 1998's Wrongfully Accused, a parody of The Fugitive. More recent acting roles included playing a buffoonish president in the 2003 Hollywood parody Scary Movie 3 and its 2006 sequel. In the latter film's most memorable sequence, his character unwittingly addressed gagging diplomats at the United Nations while naked.

But Nielsen also had a serious side. During the 1990s, he took to the stage in Darrow, a one-man drama about legendary US lawyer Clarence Darrow.

"I didn't want to go ahead and be pegged for doing only, although comedy is burgeoning," he told Reuters in a 1996 interview. "I'd like to see how far I can stretch and keep on doing 'dumb and stupid' (comedy) and drama and if possible be accepted at both. There's a line with an audience you can't always cross over. Sometimes, they only want to see you being funny."