U.S. Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said it took a long time for South Korea to overcome a series of hardships and build democracy, suggesting that it is too much to expect Libya to achieve stability and democracy just in a few years.

"If you think about South Korea, there were coups, there were assassinations, there was a lot of problems for the Koreans to build their economy, to create their democracy," Clinton said during a town hall meeting Tuesday.

"This doesn't happen overnight. And, yes, it's been a couple of years. I think it's worth European support, Arab support, American support to try to help the Libyan people realize the dream that they had when they went after" long-time leader Moammar Gadhafi, she said. (Yonhap)