North and South Korea on Monday restored their cross-border hotlines, a move that Seoul said could help improve ties after Pyongyang sparked global concern with missile tests in recent weeks.
The two sides resumed their first phone calls with officials since August, days after the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting on North Korean missile tests.
The two Koreas signaled a surprise thaw in relations by announcing the resumption of cross-border communications in late July – more than a year earlier – but the detente was short-lived, as Pyongyang answered the call just two weeks later. stopped giving.
Seoul’s unification ministry confirmed the phone call between officials of the two rivals on Monday morning.
“It’s been a while and I’m very glad that the communication line has been restored,” a South Korean official told his northern counterpart in footage provided by the ministry to reporters.
The South’s Defense Ministry also confirmed that cross-border military communications had resumed.
“With the restoration of the South-North communication line, the government assesses that the foundation for healing inter-Korean relations has been provided,” the unification ministry said in a statement.
“The government hopes … to swiftly resume negotiations and begin pragmatic discussions to fix inter-Korean relations.”
North Korea’s official news agency KCNA said earlier on Monday North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had “expressed his intention to cut the North-South communication lines”.
It reported that the move was an attempt to establish “lasting peace” on the Korean peninsula.
But one analyst saw Monday’s resumption as a “symbolic” gesture, noting the North’s recent missile launches.
Park Won-gon, professor of North Korean studies at Iwa Woman’s University, said, “Even if it does lead to talks, we may be entering a new phase where North Korea is engaging in dialogue, but at the same time Along with continues the provocation.”
– Ignoring the call –
North Korea unilaterally cut all official military and political communication links in June last year after activists sent anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border.
Both sides had said on July 27 this year that all lines have been restored.
Their joint declaration, which coincided with the anniversary of the end of the Korean War, was the first positive development since a series of summits between Kim and the South’s President Moon Jae-in in 2018 that have achieved any significant breakthrough. have failed.
He also revealed at the time that Kim and Moon had exchanged a series of letters from April in which they agreed that re-establishing the hotline was a productive first step in resuming relations between the two rivals. which was in spite of their late 1950-53. Conflict, technically remain at war.
But cross-border communications lasted just two weeks, with the North abandoning them in protest of a joint US-South Korea military exercise.
During this period, Pyongyang has conducted a series of tension-enhancing missile tests.
In September, it tested what it said was a long-range cruise missile, and earlier this week it tested what it described as a hypersonic gliding vehicle, which the South Korean military said appeared to be in an early stage of development. Is.
On Friday it said it had successfully fired a new anti-aircraft missile.
Pyongyang on Sunday criticized the UN Security Council for holding an emergency meeting on missile tests, accusing member states of playing with “time-bombs”.
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