With figure skaters, strange weather patterns, a fresh missile threat and ageing cadres praising a "peerlessly great man", North Korea celebrated leader Kim Jong-il's 67th birthday on Monday.
While the North basked in festivities for Kim, who suffered a suspected stroke in August but appears to have recovered, the region was on edge over a possible missile launch.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on her first overseas visit since taking office, flew to Asia where the reclusive North will be high on her agenda.
South Korean media reports say the North has been readying its longest-range Taepodong-2 missile for a test.
The North said in its official media on Monday it had the right to fire the rocket, which is supposed to be able to hit Alaska but has never successfully flown.
"One will come to know later what will be launched in the DPRK (North Korea)," its official KCNA news agency said.
North Korea says the long-range missile is a cornerstone of its peaceful space programme, although experts say it is for military purposes and designed to strike the United States.
In recent weeks, North Korea's harsh rhetoric has increased sharply, including a threat to destroy the wealthy South in anger at the hardline policies of its President Lee Myung-bak.
South Korean officials also suspect the North could soon test short-range missiles, aiming to put pressure on Lee to resume massive aid and to get the Obama administration's attention.
North Korea has been preparing to test missiles since January, the South's defence minister Lee Sang-hee told parliament, adding he had given commanders in the field authorisation to respond to any North Korean provocation.
On Friday, Clinton offered North Korea a peace treaty, normal ties and aid if it eliminated its nuclear arms programme. There has been no response yet from Pyongyang.
She was scheduled to arrive in Japan on Monday on a trip that also takes her to Indonesia, South Korea and China.
SPECULATION OVER SUCCESSOR
Kim's health problems have set off fresh speculation over who might succeed him as leader of Asia's only communist dynasty and one of the world's most isolated states, whose efforts to become a nuclear weapons power mean it is never far from the international community's list of major concerns. [ID:nSEO50324]
Kim appears to have recovered although his trademark paunch presses less clearly on his mud-grey jumpsuits, the bouffant hair has thinned and he appears to have given up wearing platform shoes -- with speculation in the South that, post-stroke, these are harder for him to balance in.
Kim, who took power after his father and state founder Kim Il-sung died in 1994, has vexed the world for years with his pursuit of nuclear arms and the constant threat of sending his one million-strong army across the border that has divided the Korean peninsula for over half a century.
He has relied on military threats, with some success, to squeeze concessions from global powers to help keep afloat a ravaged economy that has grown smaller since he took power.
In North Korea, Kim's birthday means festivals with singing soldiers, dancing in the street, a few extra handfuls of rice for workers and sweets for children. The North said "a mysterious moon halo" was seen above Mt Jong-il just before the birthday.
It is not unusual for Kim to miss the public birthday celebrations. But his absence in the past year from events he usually attends raised concern about his health, his grip on power and who might be making decisions about the North's nuclear arms programmes.
This year, synchronised swimmers and figure skaters performed and a national meeting was held at which the North's nominal number two leader, Kim Yong-nam, said: "The history of humankind has never known such a peerlessly great man as Kim Jong-il."