Foreign Desk Report
PYONGYANG: South and North Korea have restored cross-border communications, just over a year since the hotline was cut off, in a surprise move that the two countries said was part of an effort to rebuild trust.
The decision was announced in statements by South Korea’s presidential Blue House and KCNA, the North’s state media agency. KCNA said all inter-Korean communication channels were reopened at 10am on Tuesday (01:00 GMT) in line with an agreement between the countries’ two leaders.
The Blue House said the restoration of communication lines would have a “positive impact on the improvement and development of South-North relations”. KCNA also welcomed the “positive effects” of the decision, which it said represented “a big stride in recovering the mutual trust and promoting reconciliation”.
The move to restore hotline links comes 13 months after Pyongyang shut down all communication in protest over Seoul’s supposed failure to stop activists from sending anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across the border.
Both sides said South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had been exchanging letters since April this year. Kim has talked of the serious problems plaguing his country this year, after it closed its borders with China early in the COVID-19 pandemic. In January, he told a rare party congress that the North’s five-year economic plan had failed in almost every area, amid chronic power and food shortages exacerbated by sanctions, the pandemic and floods. In June, he described the food situation as “tense”.
“We know North Korea has been reeling from the pandemic over the past year,” Soo Kim, a former CIA North Korea analyst who now works at the Rand Corporation told media.
