(News Focus) N. Korea raises tension even as it signals conciliation

SEOUL, Jan. 19 (Yonhap) -- Blowing hot and cold, North Korea appears to be
sending the message that it is not to be taken lightly by showcasing its military
prowess while offering an olive branch that could pave the way for foreign
assistance needed for its survival.
North Korea on Sunday said it had conducted a joint armed forces drill that its
leader Kim Jong-il inspected in person, the first time ever that the 68-year-old
had reportedly looked over a combined training session of the army, the navy and
the air force.
The report by the state's official media came two days after the North's highest
military committee raised tension by warning of a "sacred" battle against South
Korea. The National Defense Commission headed by Kim slammed a contingency plan
that South Korea had reportedly prepared to deal with a potential regime collapse
in Pyongyang.
"They're saying, 'We're opening up, but don't take our regime lightly," Koh
Yu-hwan, a North Korea professor at Seoul's Dongguk University, said. "It is also
trying to unite its regime internally against foreign impact that may be
inevitable as it opens up."
The warning by the commission came just hours after the impoverished North
accepted a long-stalled South Korean offer of 10,000 tons of corn aid. On
Tuesday, a team of South Korean officials crossed the heavily armed inter-Korean
border after being granted access to meet with their North Korean counterparts
and discuss ways to improve the joint operation of a factory park in the North
Korean border town of Kaesong.
"The North Korean regime is drawing the line: security constitutes the most vital
interest for the country, so economic cooperation should not compromise it," Paik
Hak-soon, a Sejong Institute researcher, said.
In its New Year's Day message, North Korea said its will to improve relations
with the South remained "unshakable" as long as the sides respect the accords
reached in their two summit meetings in 2000 and 2007.
Following the inauguration of conservative President Lee Myung-bak in Seoul in
February 2008, relations between the divided countries froze, leading to
recrimination and the suspension of dialogue.
The mood deteriorated in the bottom half of last year when the U.N. slapped the
North with a fresh round of sanctions for its nuclear test in May and U.S.-led
international pressure on the arms trade conducted by the communist state
intensified.
Despite a brief gunfight between the navies of the two Koreas, analysts say North
Korea has been cornered into a position where it can no longer spurn assistance
from South Korea and other rivals, especially when it has pronounced its goal of
a "strong and prosperous nation" by 2012.
The year marks the centennial of the birthday of North Korea's founder Kim
Il-sung, who died in 1994 after grooming his son, Jong-il, as his successor.
Observers say the budding inter-Korean economic cooperation could form the
groundwork for the North's acceleration toward its goal of economic revival once
it rejoins the stalled six-nation aid-for-denuclearization talks and succeeds in
getting sanctions on it eased.
North Korea repeatedly demanded this year that the sanctions be removed before it
returns to the multilateral talks that also include the U.S., South Korea, China,
Japan and Russia, demonstrating the economic impact of the sanctions that were
imposed for its missile and nuclear tests.
The U.S. has yet to budge from its stance that the lifting of sanctions can only
be considered once the North returns to the talks and makes good on its pledge to
move toward denuclearization.
South and North Korea remain in a technical state of war after the 1950-53 Korean
War ended in a truce.