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Associated PressSEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea has faster, more powerful tanks prowling the world's most heavily armed border and 200,000 special forces poised to carry out assassinations and cause havoc in South Korea, a major military review said Thursday.
Seoul's Defense Ministry report, released every two years, signals that the North's military threat has expanded. It comes as President Lee Myung-bak's administration scrambles to respond to criticism that it was unprepared for a Nov. 23 North Korean artillery attack on a front-line island that killed four people.
That attack, along with an alleged North Korean torpedoing of a warship in March, has prompted South Korea to define the North in the defense document as its "enemy," a stronger description - and one that will likely be noticed by Pyongyang - than in 2008, when the North was only called a "direct and serious threat."
The new document says the North intends to rely on its nuclear program, special forces, long-range artillery, submarines and cyber warfare forces as a counterweight to South Korea's high-tech conventional military.
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