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Seoul. One day after North Korea warned of a possible attack against the South, the United States and South Korea ordered their forces here to their highest alert in three years, increasing surveillance flights and satellite reconnaissance to counter what officials termed a “grave threat.”

The move was the latest sign of escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula, after North Korea conducted its second nuclear test on Monday, sparking a confrontation with South Korea and the international community that has evolved into ever more bellicose rhetoric.

North Korea reinforced its menacing language by test-firing six short-range missiles this week.

The South Korean Defense Ministry said allied troops, including 28,000 US soldiers based in South Korea, raised their Watch Condition, or Watchcon, to the second-highest level from Watchcon 3 to Watchcon 2.

South Korea has put its military on such a high level of alert only five times since hostilities in the three-year Korean War ended in an armistice in 1953, most recently when North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in October 2006.

The upgraded alert provides for a significant increase in the use of reconnaissance planes and spy satellites, as well as a more vigorous gathering and analysis of electronic signals from the North, ministry officials said.

The Defense Ministry declined to confirm South Korean news reports that its military has moved or planned to move warships and artillery to islands near the western sea border with North Korea.

But a South Korean military official said that in recent months, North Korea had increased training exercises among its coastal artillery units opposite the South Korean islands.

The North’s state-controlled media warned on Thursday that “even a minor accidental clash could lead to nuclear war.”

“It’s a matter of time when a fuse for war is triggered,” the North Korean government’s official newspaper, Minju Joseon, said in a commentary carried by the state-controlled news agency KCNA.

As the South Korean government urged its people to remain calm, there was no sign of anxiety in villagers along the border.

In Seoul, with a population of 10.4 million and just 35 miles from the border, preparations continued for the funeral on Friday of former President Roh Moo-hyun who committed suicide on Saturday.

North Korea intensified its threats 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’s nuclear test on Monday.

The North had earlier warned the South Korean authorities not to take part in the operation, which is known as the Proliferation Security Initiative.

In their Wednesday statement, the North Koreans also said that they “no longer feel bound” by the 1953 armistice. Technically, the two Koreas have remained at war for more than 50 years, because the 1953 armistice was never replaced with a final peace treaty.

The North previously called the armistice a “useless piece of paper” and declared that it no longer felt bound by it.

Washington and Seoul consider such statements a gambit to raise tension and draw the United States to bilateral talks.

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the North was acting in a “belligerent manner toward its neighbors” that carried potential “consequences.”

She said talks were under way at the United Nations. US and Japanese officials are drafting a Security Council resolution concentrating on five or six ways to flesh out sanctions against North Korea that have never been enforced.

China supports the idea of sanctions, but it wants to work slowly and to first bolster measures passed in 2006.

The New York Times