South Korean President Lee Myung Bak delivered a televised speech to the nation on Nov. 29 regarding the Nov. 23 North Korean artillery attack on Yeonpyeong Island. The tone of the speech was stern, raising the question of South Korea's future policy toward North Korea, and in particular whether Seoul is becoming more willing to use counterstrikes in the event of future provocations. Tensions are high after the incident and both states on the peninsula are watching for any sign of escalation. The United States and South Korea entered the second day of "high intensity" naval exercises involving the USS George Washington carrier strike group in the West/Yellow Sea off the west coast of the Korean Peninsula. South Korea has doubled the number of long-range artillery and added multiple rocket systems on the island, while the North has allegedly moved SA-2 surface-to-air missiles near the maritime border and readied anti-ship missiles. A flurry of diplomacy has taken place among the six parties most involved in Korean affairs: the two Koreas, China, the United States, Japan and Russia. China has proposed an emergency round of talks, but South Korea and the United States and their allies have neither embraced this offer nor made clear what their response will entail. Lee's speech was similar in tone to the May 24 speech he gave after an international investigation concluded that North Korea was responsible for sinking a South Korean corvette, the ChonAn. In both speeches, he compared the incidents to previous unprovoked attacks by the North — including an assassination attempt in South Korea in 1968 and Burma in 1983, and the explosion of Korean Air Flight 858 that killed more than 100 civilians — and declared the overall security situation has changed and South Korea will no longer tolerate North Korea's actions. In May, Lee said North Korea would "pay a price corresponding to its provocative acts," and in the November speech, Lee said, "If the North commits any additional provocations against the South, we will make sure that it pays a dear price without fail." However, Lee's speech in November was harsher. Though the May speech outlined specific military and defense measures that would be taken (including preventing North Korean ships from operating in sea lanes under South Korea's control), his Nov. 29 speech mentioned defending the western islands near the disputed maritime border with a "watertight stance" and actualizing the defense reforms already under way. Lee expressed his own frustration and emphasized that the Yeonpyeong attack was "entirely different and unprecedented” because it was a direct attack on South Korean territory and resulted in the death of two civilians. Lee noted that South Korean civilians had not been killed by North Korean military action (as opposed to terrorist action) since the Korean War. Lee did not plead with the North to correct its behavior, or reference the need to maintain humanitarian aid to the North as he did in the May speech. Instead, he emphasized that the South could hardly expect Pyongyang to retreat from nuclear weapons and brinkmanship "on its own." Critically, Lee's speech pointed out that whereas there was a "split in public opinion" over the sinking of the ChonAn, the Korean people remain united in the face of the Yeonpyeong attack. Much of the blame in March was directed by opposition political forces toward the armed forces for mishandling the response, rather than toward the North. In August, Korean polls indicated 20-30 percent of the country doubted the government's finding that the North was responsible for the torpedo attack against the ChonAn. Though the speech came only one week after the attack, at the moment there appears to be no such division. Thus South Korea appears to be further hardening its stance against the North. This process was already evident following the ChonAn incident, especially so with the South Korean announcement on Nov. 18, just days before the surprise shelling, saying the "Sunshine Policy" of accommodation with the North had failed. This was a policy that has defined South Korean attempts to warm relations since the administration of former South Korean President Kim Dae Jung. The scrapping of the Sunshine Policy and the subsequent attack raise the question of what will replace South Korea's policy toward the North, and whether it will be more militarily aggressive than it has been in the past. Over recent decades, Seoul has operated on the basis that the cost of enduring an occasional surprise attack from the North was less than the potential cost of retaliating against such an attack and triggering a wider conflict or even full-scale war. This was an entirely rational calculation by the South: Though the risk of war was low, the costs of war were too high to accept, so attacks by the North were considered attrition and were endured by the South. After the ChonAn incident, with a divided public, this policy came into question, and President Lee warned of retaliation. Moreover, the South Koreans did return fire after Yeonpyeong was shelled. The Yeonpyeong incident has reinforced those doubts and has raised questions as to whether Seoul's calculations were overly cautious and whether some military retaliation is necessary in the event of belligerent actions. South Korea has vowed with what may be greater resolve and public support than previously seen that future North Korean provocations will be immediately met with retaliation. President Lee and his security advisers met on Nov. 25 and discussed changing the rules of engagement yet again in the West/Yellow Sea to focus on repelling attacks rather than avoiding escalation. They also discussed the possibility of increasing troop deployments on the islands. If public support remains galvanized over the incident, and if the domestic response to the Yeonpyeong incident proves categorically different than the inward-focused response to the ChonAn, South Korea may adopt a more aggressive defense posture toward the North. But even in the event that Seoul chooses to use counterstrikes as its response to future provocations, the deterrent effect against the North remains uncertain. Since it is by no means unlikely that North Korea would continue to stage provocations, a policy of robust retaliation from the South could quickly cause incidents to escalate and become very difficult to contain.