N. Korea May Try to Provoke S. Korea in Unexpected Manner

SEOUL (Yonhap) -- North Korea may try to jolt South Korea with an unexpected provocation along their shared border, Seoul's chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said on Feb. 19.

"We expect various scenarios of North Korean provocation, including at the NLL,"
Kim Thae-young said at a parliamentary hearing.
Kim expressed confidence, however, that South Korea and the U.S. are fully
prepared for any contingency, saying the two sides are meeting daily "at
daybreak" to share and assess their intelligence.
North Korea recently stepped up its coercive rhetoric against South Korea and
warned of an armed clash near the U.N.-drawn Northern Limit Line (NLL) in the
Yellow Sea -- the site of bloody naval clashes in 1999 and 2002.
Pyongyang recently nullified all of its military agreements with Seoul and is
moving forward with a rocket launch it claims is aimed at putting a satellite
into orbit. South Korean intelligence officials suspect the North actually
intends to test-fire a long-range missile capable of reaching Alaska or Hawaii.
About 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea as a deterrent against the
North, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended in a ceasefire rather than a
peace treaty.