THE US DEPLOYS FIGHTER JETS IN SUPPORT OF SOUTH KOREA AGAINST THE NORTH

The South Korean president on Monday warned North Korea that any provocative moves will be met with "a strong response" as the United States deployed stealth fighter jets in the tense region as part of joint military exercises.

"If there is any provocation against South Korea and its people, there should be a strong response in initial combat without any political considerations," President Park Geun-hye said at a meeting with senior defense and security officials, according to her office.

Her comments came after North Korea rattled off fresh volleys of bombastic rhetoric over the weekend, declaring that it had entered a "state of war" with the South and labeling the U.S. mainland a "boiled pumpkin," vulnerable to attack.

The two Koreas are technically still at

war after their conflict in the early 1950s ended in a truce not a peace treaty.

The secretive regime of Kim Jong Un has delivered a steady stream of verbal attacks against South Korea and the United States in recent weeks, including the threat of a nuclear strike.

It has lashed out at the U.S.-South Korean military drills currently under way and at the tougher U.N. sanctions that were slapped on it after its latest nuclear test in February.

Analysts have expressed heavy skepticism that the North has the military capabilities to follow through on many of its melodramatic threats.

But concerns remain that it could carry out a localized attack on South Korea, as it did in November 2010 when it shelled Yeongpyeong Island, killing four people.

Displays of strength

The United States has sought to show its willingness to defend its South Korean ally by drawing attention to displays of its military strength during the drills taking place in South Korea.

Washington's recent announcements concerning practice flights over South Korea by B-52 bombers and B-2 stealth bombers, both of which can carry both conventional and nuclear weapons, have not been lost on Pyongyang, which has described them as acts of U.S. hostility.

Read more: N Korea readying rockets to aim at U.S. targets

There was no immediate reaction on North Korean state media Monday to the U.S. statement saying the stealth fighters, F-22 Raptors, were sent to the main U.S. Air Force Base in South Korea to support air drills in the annual Foal Eagle training exercises there.

U.S. and South Korean officials have been trying to strike a balance between acknowledging that the North's rhetoric is cause for concern and at the same time playing down the severity of the threat.

Park said Monday that she was "viewing the threat from North Korea in a serious manner."

But a senior U.S. Defense Department official said late last week that there were "no indications at this point that it's anything more than warmongering rhetoric."

South Korea has noted that scores of its workers have continued in recent days to enter and leave the Kaesong Industrial Complex, a joint economic cooperation zone between the two Koreas situated on the North's side of the border.

That is despite Pyongyang cutting a key military hotline on the border and threatening to shut down the comple