Last month, North and South Korea narrowly avoided a catastrophic military confrontation. After 40 hours of strenuous negotiations, the South agreed to stop loudspeaker broadcasts into the demilitarized zone between the two countries, in exchange for the North expressing "regret" for the South Korean soldiers killed by a land mine blast in the DMZ three weeks earlier.
While the crisis featured North Korea's familiar belligerence and aggressive rhetoric, there were also some interesting new twists. Understanding these developments could help to generate enough momentum to initiate, after more than seven years of confrontation, genuine inter-Korean cooperation and help guide the peninsula toward a more peaceful and secure future.
The first new development is the South Korean leadership's much firmer response to provocations from the North. In 2010, the South Korean public was sharply critical of the military's failure to retaliate immediately following the North's sinking of the Cheonan, a South Korean warship carrying more than 100 personnel, and its shelling of Yeonpyeong Island later that year.