“There could be some real fireworks.”

That’s the warning noted Korea expert Peter Beck gave Fox News Saturday regarding the upcoming U.S.-South Korea naval exercises off the west coast of the Korean peninsula.

Those war games come just days after the North’s artillery shelling of the South Korean island of Yeonpyong which left four dead and 18 injured.

Today, a North Korean spokesman seemed to back up expert Beck’s prediction,  saying there will be “unpredictable consequences” as a result of the exercises.

The U.S. is taking no chances. While it is going ahead with the drills, military staffers on the Korean mainland are taking added security measures.

This as South Koreans were also making noise. Some 1,000 veterans protested Saturday in front of the Defense Ministry building in Seoul demanding the South fight back.

So what is the message that North Korea is trying to send with this latest barrage of shells and rhetoric?

Seoul-based Korea expert Andrei Lankov tells Fox News it is quite simple: “We are here, we are dangerous, we are unpredictable.”

Many here in the South hope the upcoming week will just see a war of words in the region.