North Korea will restore communications with Seoul from Monday, after cutting them off in August, the official KCNA news agency announced.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “has expressed his intention to restore the severed communication channels between the North and the South,” KCNA reported on Monday morning, adding that the move aims to establish “lasting peace” on the Korean peninsula.
“The bodies concerned have decided to restore all north-south communication channels from 9:00 a.m. (00:00 GMT) on October 4,” the agency said.
Communications, suspended and repeated for several months, will be re-established a few days after Pyongyang fired missiles, prompting an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.
North Korea unilaterally cut off all official channels of military and political communication in June 2020 after denouncing the sending of anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets to its territory by militants based in the South.
A surprise thaw in relations
A year later, on July 27, 2021, the two Koreas announced a surprise thaw in their relations with the restoration of these cross-border communications.
The decision, released on the anniversary of the end of hostilities in the Korean War, was the first positive announcement since the series of summits in 2018 between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong. One, which had not allowed any significant diplomatic breakthrough.
The two leaders had had their first telephone conversation that day and the two sides had revealed an exchange of letters since April between Messrs. Kim and Moon, in which they believed that reestablishing a phone line between them would be a first step in warming relations between the two countries, technically still at war.
This detente did not last, however, Pyongyang, irritated by joint military exercises by the United States and South Korea, ceasing to respond to appeals two weeks later.
Since then, Pyongyang has reported firing a long-range cruise missile followed by a missile billed as hypersonic and, on Friday, an anti-aircraft missile.
North Korea blasted the emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on Sunday over the missile fire, Pyongyang accusing member countries of playing with a “time bomb”.
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