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 SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea warned on Friday that a South Korean military drill around frontline islands could lead to a “full-scale war,” even as it allowed South Korean trucks carrying private food aid for North Korean children to cross the border. One hundred and eighty tons of flour from the Korea Peace Foundation was the first such aid shipment since the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il died last month, leaving his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, as his heir and leaving the peninsula jittery. As the North Korean government has focused on consolidating the leadership succession, it has vowed never to deal with the government of President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea, who has taken a tougher stand on the North than his predecessors did. Seoul also stopped its annual major food and fertiliser shipments to the North although it has been allowing humanitarian aid by civic groups, mostly modest in scale.
– Another sign of just how bad things have gotten in North Korea: Activists in the South sent balloons skyward today carrying a hot black-market item: warm socks. Members of North Korea Peace tell AFP it's not about politics. "All we want is that people in the North wear warm socks over their frozen feet," says a spokeswoman. "Warm socks are so rare and they can easily be traded for cash in the North. One pair of socks fetches about 22 pounds of corn, which is enough to sustain a person for a month." About 1,000 pairs went up over the border. On a more formal front, the North allowed in trucks from the South carrying food—even as it threatened "full-scale war" over Seoul's military exercises, notes the New York Times.