Scholars in international relations have largely shared that militarized international conflict and tension tend to make business elites to decrease or adjust trade flows with adversary nations. Unlike this widely accepted conclusion, the trade relationship between South and North Korea under the nuclear confrontation (2002-2006) showed a steady growth despite the rising military tension caused by the North’s continued attempts for nuclear development. This study analyzes under what conditions the international conflict did not undermine existing level of trade and investment flows and which factors predominantly affected the actors’ behavior by focusing on South Korean traders. It will conclude that substantial change of actors and dynamics that framed inter-Korean relations after the first-ever summit talks in 2000 enabled the traders to continue to engage North Korea even under the nuclear crisis. In terms of what actually motivated South Korean traders in these transactions, it will argue that South Korean domestic economic needs that desperately sought out a lower-cost production base overseas provided a key driving force for them to risk the military instability and to pursue trade utility in that situation. This study will prove this argument by providing a result of the semi-structured survey of South Korean entrepreneurs who actually were involved in the inter-Korean trade during this particular period. Through this case study, this paper will argue that economic gain of private firms from trading relationship with their hostile counterpart provides justifiable causal mechanism during this particular period to continue economic transactions under the crisis.