North Korea's apparent moves toward a missile launch are often seen in Washington as a plea for attention, but some experts say the communist state may also be driven by reasons the United States can do little about.

But there is little doubt tension is building on the Korean peninsula.

North Korea is on combat alert as US and South Korean troops hold a 12-day exercise -- which Pyongyang calls a rehearsal for invasion. North Korea has warned that any attempt to block its upcoming "satellite" launch would spark a war.

In Washington, the State Department said the joint maneuvers "are not a threat to the North," while fearing the "satellite" is in fact a missile.

"What is a threat to the region is this bellicose rhetoric coming out of the North," acting State Department spokesman Robert Wood said when asked if Washington might be misreading Pyongyang.

US officials have said North Korea's stated plans to test a satellite are a way to ensure that it remains on Washington's agenda amid a change in administration and a deadlock in disarmament talks.

Dana Perino, spokeswoman for then president George W. Bush, went so far as to compare North Korea to an infant, saying: "It's not surprising that they would bang their spoons on their high chair to try to get attention."

But Korea expert L. Gordon Flake, who advised then senator Barack Obama when he was a presidential candidate, said North Korea's military looked determined to develop missiles regardless of day-to-day political developments.

Flake noted that Pyongyang -- which fired a long-range missile over Japan in 1998 -- went ahead with another, albeit failed, test in 2006 despite repeated warnings.

"Why do we assume that all politics is domestic in the US and not in North Korea?" said Flake, who heads the Mansfield Foundation on US-Asia relations and is not affiliated with President Obama's administration.

"It is possible to say that they will use brinksmanship and act out if they ignored, but right now it is hard to see what they would get as they are not necessarily being ignored -- they have a demand on the table," Flake said.

North Korea, which tested an atom bomb in 2006, signed a six-nation deal the following year that gave it badly needed aid and security guarantees in return for ending its nuclear drive.

But the deal has been at a standstill with the United States pressing North Korea to do more to verify that it is ending its nuclear weapons program.

Author and scholar Selig Harrison said after a recent visit to Pyongyang that the harder North Korea line reflected concerns over South Korea whose president, Lee Myung-Bak, it has labeled everything from "traitor" to "scum."

In his first year in office Lee has reversed the decade-long policy of liberal South Korean leaders who, hoping for an eventual peaceful reunification, delivered aid and investment to the North with few conditions attached.

Analysts said a successful test would not only get Obama's attention but also be a huge boost to North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il as it would come before South Korea's first planned domestic satellite launch in June.

Flake doubted North Korea worried about sanctions, as only arch-enemy Japan slapped painful economic measures over the 2006 missile test.

And even if some North Korean foreign ministry officials might be persuaded to drop a test, their views are no match for a powerful military, Flake said.

But Bruce Klingner, a former analyst at the CIA who is now at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said it was a mistake to see North Korean decision-making as factionalized.

"It's sort of like a used car salesman saying, 'Hey, I want to give you this car at a good price but just provide me with a few more concessions as I think you and I working against my boss can get a good deal,'" he said.

Klingner said North Korea may simply be going ahead with a missile test -- and would pick its reason as it moves along, be it the United States, South Korea or Japan.

"North Korea's strategy has been to pick the lowest-hanging fruit and if there's a roadblock, then simply to change lanes," he said.