By John Knaus

Over the past few weeks, the regime in North Korea has made a number of surprisingly conciliatory gestures. It released two American reporters, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, following a trip by former U.S. President Clinton.

The North also freed a South Korean worker who had been detained since March; and dispatched diplomats to New Mexico to meet with Gov. Bill Richardson; and sent a delegation to Seoul to pay respects to former President Kim Dae-jung who died on Aug. 18.

These moves by the ``Hermit Kingdom'' are aimed at re-engaging the outside world, driven in large measure by a desire on the part of Kim Jong-il and his government to re-secure much needed economic aid as U.N. sanctions begin to take effect and the first cracks in the walls that protect the regime in Pyongyang begin to appear.

Until recently, through its frequently erratic and aggressive behavior toward the outside world, North Korea had been in the process of re-isolating itself.

Unlike in the past when it received aid from South Korea, the United States and others, the regime is now increasingly reliant on its one remaining powerful international ally, China.

But as North Korea continues to raise tensions in Northeast Asia, China has shown increasing frustration with the regime in Pyongyang, resulting in support for stricter enforcement of U.N. sanctions against North Korea.

In addition, the global economic downturn has also significantly decreased cross-border trade between North Korea and China.

If these trends continue or worsen, North Korea could be faced with an even grimmer economic situation, which could have devastating consequences for both the North Korean people and the regime. Significantly, signs of discontent among the North Korean people have already begun to surface.

The economic challenges that the country has endured, particularly over the last few years as the country has again isolated itself and the regime has attempted to re-exert a stronger influence over society, have created rifts between the regime and the people.

These rifts were most clearly demonstrated in confrontations that reportedly took place in 2008 as the regime attempted to remove women under the age of 40 from working in markets that do exist in the country.

When confronted with the prospect of losing access to their only means of deriving a viable, if meager, existence, the women rose up against the authorities and the regime was forced eventually to back down.

In addition, new channels of access to the country, which have developed over the past decade, have presented an opportunity for the international community to bypass the regime's attempted information blockade and reach the North Korean people directly.

One of the most prominent of these developments, and one that is particularly vexing to the regime, is the growing number of independent radio stations broadcasting into North Korea.

These stations, many of them established and run by North Korean defectors, as well as U.S. government-sponsored stations such as Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, provide citizens inside North Korea with both an important source of news about what is happening in their own country and a window on the outside world.

The defector community in South Korea, which has grown to over 16,000, is also beginning to organize itself more formally and is trying to establish channels connecting its contacts in North Korea with the broader world.

Groups of North Korean intellectuals and former military officials now in South Korea are attempting to reconnect with their former colleagues in the North Korean elite and provide them information and advice, which they can potentially use to reform the country in incremental but important ways.

A great deal of informal contact is also opening the door to North Korea ― from traders going back and forth to China to family members in South Korea calling their relatives in the North and describing their new lives.

Most insidious of all to the regime might well be South Korean soap operas, which make their way across the border and show a South Korea that is modern, prosperous, and safe ― a complete contradiction of what North Koreans are told by their government about their southern neighbor.

This type of contact between the people of North Korea and the outside world would have been unimaginable only a few years ago. This constellation of forces is slowly eroding the regime's absolute control.

Moreover, Pyongyang must also contend with the eventual, if not imminent, transition of power to the third generation of the Kim family.

By implementing these recent conciliatory measures, North Korean leader Kim may have bought himself a bit more time, both from his international critics and among the ruling elite at home, but the U.S., South Korea and the rest of the world would be wise to prepare now for an increasingly likely scenario of regime decay, which will have long-lasting implications for both South and North Korea as well as peace in Northeast Asia more broadly.

John Knaus is senior program officer for Asia at the National Endowment Democracy (NED). The congressionally-funded NED is a Washington, D.C.-based private, nonprofit organization created in 1983 to strengthen democratic institutions around the world through nongovernmental efforts and has been funding North Korea-related programs for over 10 years.