Seoul, Oct. 4 (BNA): North Korea restored dormant hotlines of communication with South Korea in a small and fragile reconciliation move Monday in an apparently difficult effort to win outside concessions with a mixture of conciliatory gestures and missile tests.
It is unclear to what extent the move will improve inter-Korean relations, as Pyongyang has a history of using hotlines as a bargaining chip in dealing with Seoul. She often suspended it unilaterally before reactivating it when she needed better relations with Seoul, the Associated Press reports.
North Korean liaison officers answered phone calls made by their South Korean counterparts through a range of government and military channels across the border Monday morning for the first time in nearly two months.
“We haven’t talked for a long time. We are very happy that communication channels have been restored in this way. We hope that South-North relations will develop to a new level,” an official in Seoul said during a telephone conversation with his North Korean counterpart through a single channel.
On a separate military channel, the two Koreas exchanged information about fishing activities along their disputed western sea border — where several bloody inter-Korean sea battles took place in previous years — to prevent similar skirmishes, the Defense Ministry in Seoul said. A ministry statement said Seoul hopes the restoration of the hotlines will help reduce tensions on the peninsula.
Hotlines are the telephone and fax channels that Koreans use to set up meetings, arrange border crossings, and avoid accidental clashes. It has been largely frozen for more than a year as the North cut it off in protest of campaigns to disseminate civilian publications in South Korea. Contacts were briefly revived for about two weeks this summer, but North Korea later refused to exchange messages again after Seoul held annual military exercises with Washington that Pyongyang viewed as a rehearsal for the invasion.
Last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un expressed his willingness to reactivate communication channels, saying he wanted to realize the desire of the Korean people to promote peace on the peninsula. Kim Yo Jong, Kim’s influential sister, said earlier that North Korea is open to resuming talks and steps for cooperation if conditions are met.
Some experts question the sincerity of North Korea’s initiative because it came at a time when North Korea renewed its missile tests after a six-month hiatus. Kim Yo Jong also said that South Korea should abandon “double-dealing standards” and a “hostile view” if it really wanted to improve relations, a position largely echoed by her brother.
Experts say North Korea is trying to use South Korea’s desire to improve relations to pressure it into persuading the United States to ease economic sanctions imposed on North Korea. Others say North Korea wants South Korea not to criticize its ballistic missile tests, which are banned under UN Security Council resolutions, as part of its efforts to gain international recognition as a nuclear weapons state.
“The South Korean authorities should make positive efforts to put North-South relations on the right track and settle important tasks that should be given priority to open bright prospects for the future, taking into account the meaning of restoring contacts,” the official North Korean Central News Agency said before restoring the hotline.
It is not clear whether North Korea will get what it wants from the pressure campaign. Kim Jong Un has said he will not return to talks with the United States unless it abandons its “hostile policy” toward the North, an apparent reference to sanctions. For its part, the United States has offered to hold talks “anywhere, anytime” without preconditions, a position Kim described last week as a “cunning” US attempt to hide its hostility to North Korea.
Nuclear diplomacy between Pyongyang and Washington collapsed in early 2019 over disagreements over exchanging sanctions relief with denuclearization steps. Despite a recent series of weapons tests, North Korea still maintained a 2018 moratorium on testing long-range missiles that directly threaten the mainland United States, a sign that it does not want to spoil the prospects for future diplomacy with the United States.