S. Korea activists float socks over to N. Korea 
 
 SEOUL — South Korean activists on Saturday released huge gas-filled balloons filled with socks over the border into impoverished North Korea despite threats from Pyongyang. 
 
 The socks can be worn to help survive the harsh winter, be sold for cash or exchanged in the communist North for food that can keep a person going for a month, the campaigners say. 
 
 About 1,000 pairs of socks were launched by five large plastic balloons from the northern South Korean city of Paju. 
 
 Each pair of socks was attached with a leaflet containing a "politically innocuous" message, said the Seoul-based group North Korea Peace, which has been sending socks to the North once a month over the past few months. 
 
 "We're not interested in sending political messages or sparking any troubles there. All we want is that people in the North wear warm socks over their frozen feet," Sunny Kim, a spokeswoman for North Korea Peace, told AFP. 
 
 "Warm socks are so rare and they can easily be traded for cash in the North. One pair of socks fetches about 22 pounds (10 kilos) of corn, which is enough to sustain a person for a month." 
 
 Socks and many other daily necessities are in short supply in North Korea, which pours money and resources into building up its 1.2-million-strong armed forces under its Songun, or military-first, policy. 
 
 Activists, many of them defectors from the North, regularly send leaflets over the border lambasting the regime and urging popular uprisings like those in the Middle East and North Africa in the past year. 
 
 The launches infuriate Pyongyang, which has threatened to open fire at launch sites. 
 
 Tensions have been high on the Korean peninsula since the conservative administration in Seoul rolled back the previous liberal government's "Sunshine Policy" of reconciliation and took a tougher stance toward Pyongyang. 
 
 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. 
 
 North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Il died on December 17 to be succeeded by his youngest son Jong-Un. 
 
 The North under its new leader has taken a hostile tone with the South's government, accusing it of failing to respect the mourning period for the late leader. 
 
 Copyright © 2012 AFP. All rights reserved. More » ||||| Photo 
 
 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. 
 
 The North Korean government continued its strident rhetoric against Seoul on Friday, criticizing the live-fire exercise conducted a day earlier around several South Korean islands near the North’s southwest coast. 
 
 South Korea increased its defenses and military exercises in the area after a North Korean artillery attack in 2010 against one of the islands killed four South Koreans. 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 “The gunfire in the area can trigger a military clash between the two sides,” said a commentary carried by the North Korean government Web site Uriminzokkiri.com. “It then can escalate into a full-scale war.” 
 
 North Korea has said it was forced to conduct the 2010 artillery attack in response to a South Korean military drill in frontline waters. 
 
 Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. 
 
 Some analysts and research organizations in South Korea have expressed fears that Kim Jong-un may try to use military provocations against the South to bolster his credentials as a strong leader. But other analysts believe that Mr. Kim will not take that kind of risk until he is sure of his grip on power. 
 
 Tension is especially high over the waters near the South Korean border islands; the waters are claimed by both Koreas. The two navies have clashed there in recent years. 
 
 South Korea has said it will not provide large-scale food aid unless the North makes significant progress in ending its nuclear weapons program. But it has allowed civic groups to send small aid shipments for North Korean children, including flour, medicine and soy milk. 
 
 On Friday, the South’s Unification Ministry said that the amount of food, medicine and other aid to the North fell sharply last year. The value of the aid from both private agencies and the government dropped to 19.6 billion won, or $17.5 million, down more than 51 percent from the previous year. 
 
 Inter-Korean trade fell by more than 10 percent, to about $1.5 million in 2011, the ministry said.
– 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.