Image source,Getty Images
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has repeatedly emphasized that his opponents need to abandon their hostile policies and double standards towards North Korea.
North Korea and South Korea restarted the hotline communication after testing missiles separately, which demonstrated the willingness of both the North and the South for dialogue during the military confrontation on the peninsula.
North Korea resumed its military communication line with South Korea a few months after cutting off the inter-Korean cross-border hotline.
A few days before, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un stated that he was willing to resume communication and extend a qualified olive branch. Pyongyang also said at the time that restoring ties between the two countries depends on “the attitude of the South Korean authorities.”
Each has expectations
At the beginning of October 2021, the Ministry of Unification of South Korea stated that officials from South Korea and North Korea had the first telephone exchange since August. The Ministry of Unification said in a statement that it looks forward to resuming the dialogue between the two parties as soon as possible through stable operation of communication channels to discuss how to restore relations and promote peace.
South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated in a statement that the restoration of North-South communication has laid the foundation for stabilizing the situation on the peninsula and restoring relations between the two Koreas. South Korea’s Ministry of Defense said that the hotline will help prevent accidental conflicts and ease military tensions.
When reporting on the resumption of communication, the KCNA urged the South Korean side to “keep a deep understanding of the significance of the resumption of communication channels between the DPRK and South Korea” and to “actively make efforts to resolve major issues leading to a brighter future.”
The report did not introduce what Pyongyang is referring to as “major issues”.
Recently, Kim Jong-un and the Deputy Minister of the Workers’ Party of Korea Kim Yo-jung have repeatedly emphasized that their opponents need to abandon their hostile policies and double standards towards North Korea.
Image source,Reuters
The inter-Korean liaison building was bombed in 2020
Repeated many times
Prior to this, the communication hotline between South Korea and North Korea had been interrupted and restored several times.
In 2020, after the failure of the North-South summit, Pyongyang bombed a border office between North Korea and South Korea, which was built to improve communication.
In the same year, because of the worsening tensions, North Korea cut off all communication lines with South Korea, including the hotline and military communication channels between the leaders of the two countries.
The hotline was briefly restored in July 2021. At that time, many analyses pointed out that if economic difficulties worsen, North Korea may be forced to apply for assistance from the United States or South Korea. This includes North Korea’s mismanagement and border closures that have further hit the economy in recent years, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. North Korea is willing to restore the hotline, perhaps because it hopes to obtain foreign aid.
However, in August of the same year, after South Korea and the United States held a joint military exercise, the hotline contact between the DPRK and South Korea was once again interrupted.
Missiles and dialogue
North Korea and South Korea are still at war technically because no peace agreement was reached at the end of the Korean War in 1953.
Since September 2021, North Korea has tested four missiles in less than a month, which is accused of escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula. But North Korea has repeatedly accused South Korea of double standards in military activities.
South Korea also test-fired its first ballistic missile launched by a submarine in September 2021, saying it was in response to North Korea’s deterrence.
But when the two sides were testing missiles, South Korean President Moon Jae-in spoke at the UN General Assembly and once again suggested that the three parties of the DPRK, South Korea and the United States, or the four parties of the DPRK, the United States and China, declare the end of the war on the Korean peninsula.
The North Korean leader responded quickly and said: As long as conditions permit, the possibility of peace talks will not be ruled out. Kim Jong-un subsequently made a speech and proposed that the communication channel between South Korea and North Korea will be restarted.
Reuters quoted analysts as saying that North Korea has adopted a “carrot and stick” approach to ensure that the international community recognizes it as a nuclear weapon state and creates discord between the United States and South Korea.
Image source,Reuters
North Korea’s official media reported that it successfully tested a hypersonic missile.
North Korea-U.S. Relations
After South Korea and North Korea resumed the hotline communication, the spokesperson of the US State Department expressed support for inter-Korean cooperation, saying that the renewed hotline is “an important part of creating a more stable environment on the Korean Peninsula.”
The United States has always called on North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons. Since the Biden administration took office, the relationship between Pyongyang and the United States has so far shown no signs of easing.
Kim Jong-un said in a recent speech that, judging from the performance of the new US government in the eight months since the establishment of the new US government, the US military threat and hostile policy towards North Korea have not changed, but have intensified.
Pyongyang continues to develop new weapons systems, saying these systems are necessary for its self-defense. Experts believe that Pyongyang’s missile test and the restart of nuclear facilities also have the motivation to increase North Korea’s bargaining chip in negotiations with Washington.
North Korea experts are now concerned about a question: Is it possible that if the relationship between North Korea and South Korea improves, like the last time the Trump administration was in the United States, it will help to open the dialogue between Kim Jong Un and the Biden administration?