North and South Korea have reestablished the direct line between the two countries that had been cut by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in June last year.
Representatives of The two nations spoke by phone for three minutes, according to the South Korean Unification Ministry. The Ministry added that another call would be made on Tuesday afternoon and every day thereafter.
“We are happy to speak again after more than a year. We hope this brings good news to all the Korean people, ”said the South Korean representative.
According to the South Korean presidential office, the The leaders of the countries agreed to rebuild trust and improve ties.
Vital tool
Communications between both countries were cut off with the Outbreak of war on the Korean Peninsula in 1950 and despite its completion three years later, the South and the North are still technically in conflict.
Just in August 1972 both countries, aware of the need for some form of link, established this “hotline” (hotline) administered by the Red Cross.
It was not a minor event : This was the first formal agreement between Pyongyang and Seoul since the division of Korea into 1945.
And the lug ar was not chosen at random .
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Panmunjom , a village on the border and just over 50 miles north of Seoul, was the scene of the signing of the armistice in 1953.
United Nations representatives met with North Korean and Chinese officials to try to reach a truce.
It is located in the Demilitarized (DMZ), a strip that separates both countries from 250 kilometers long and four kilometers wide which, despite its name, is one of the most impenetrable areas in the world.
Installed almost half a century ago, the hotline consisted of a telephone and a fax line.
Today, according to the released images, it consists of a screen, two telephones (one red and one green), buttons of the same colors, and two clocks: one that indicates the time in South Korea and the other that of North Korea, 30 ′ behind your neighbor.
And it’s a vital element for dialogue between both countries.
Intermittent communication
Throughout the Korean conflict, which if its beginning after the end of World War II is considered, it has already been more than 72 years, the dialogue has been characterized by being intermittent.
Four years after the introduction of the “hotline”, the North cut it off when two of its soldiers killed two American soldiers in a dispute known as the “ax incident.”
A poplar tree blocked the view of UN observers. But the North Koreans said the poplar had been planted by Kim Il-Sung, North Korea’s first supreme leader. Enough to almost go to war.
The road was barely reopened in 1980.
In 2010, the South imposed trade sanctions on the North after the sinking of a ship and Pyongyang responded by interrupting the links.
They were restored a year later, but in 2010 were cut off again after a North Korean nuclear test.
At that time it was reported that the normal thing was that Both will communicate twice a day.
Three years later, a dispute over the Kaesong industrial complex, one of the few projects in cooperation between historical enemies, led to their freezing.
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The North Korean phone was ringing, but they did not attend to it.
Your reactivation was ordered in 2018 by Kim Jong-un , who cut it again in June 2020, when relations deteriorated after a failed summit between the two countries.
It turns out impossible to predict how long communication will be open this time. But the reality is that it is the only form of direct dialogue between the two countries.
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