http://news.yahoo.com/history-shows-...112646404.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Recent Korean history reveals a sobering possibility: It may only be a matter of time before North Korea launches a sudden, deadly attack on the South. And perhaps more unsettling, Seoul has vowed that this time, it will respond with an even stronger blow.
Humiliated by past attacks, South Korea has promised — as recently as Tuesday — to hit back hard at the next assault from the North, opening up the prospect that a skirmish could turn into a wider war.
Lost in the headline-making North Korean bluster about nuclear strikes on Washington in response to U.N. sanctions is a single sentence in a North Korean army Supreme Command statement of March 5. It said North Korea "will make a strike of justice at any target anytime as it pleases without limit."
Those words have a chilling link to the recent past, when Pyongyang, angry over perceived slights, took its time before exacting revenge on rival South Korea. Vows of retaliation after naval clashes with South Korea in 1999 and 2009, for example, were followed by more bloodshed, including attacks blamed on North Korea that killed 50 South Koreans in 2010.
Those attacks three years ago "are vivid reminders of the regime's capabilities and intentions," Bruce Klingner, a former U.S. intelligence official now at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, wrote in a recent think tank posting.
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Yes, NK has perpetrated small attacks in the past but the South showed restraint when that happened.
This time it's different. South Korea has a new woman President and she's vowed to hit back hard if the North strikes.
We could very well be seeing the start of a new Korean war. And we have a large contingency of troops there - under the UN of course, but our troops nonetheless.
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