Over 40 percent of South Koreans want their government to show a ‘strong response’ against North Korea, in the aftermath of an artillery clash with the North earlier this week that resulted in four fatal South Korean casualties.


In a poll, conducted by Realmeter, an opinion survey organization based in Seoul, 45 percent of respondents said they wanted the South Korean government to show a stern response to North Korea “even if it would escalate arms clash with North Korea,” Donga Ilbo, a local daily, said Saturday.


The poll, conducted one day after the Tuesday’s artillery shelling by North Korea, found that a 34 percent of respondent didn’t want the situation to escalate into further arms conflicts, who yet said that they wanted the South Korean military to engage any North Korea-initiated provocations in accordance with the rules of engagement.


Among the 700 people who participated in the survey, 16 percent of them supported the view that “South Korea should refrain from a military response and instead deal with the matter diplomatically and economically.”


The responses were similar across different political party lines, the newspaper said.