svn add "already under version control"

Is there any way to force subversion to ignore the fact that a locally modified folder has been entirely replaced by something else and just tell it to save the current working copy over the repository as a new version?

For example:

mkdir directory # the real directory has several files inside it too

svn add directory

svn ci

 rm -rf directory # another program removes this directory
 
 mkdir directory # it then creates an entirely new directory with similar files to the original directory
 
 
 svn add directory 
svn: warning: 'directory' is already under version control

Subversion will not let me use the new directory because it already knows about a previous one. The only solutions I've found from this list or from google is to remove the directory and re-run svn update, but this loses any changes from the new directory.

Any suggestions appreciated.