North Korea pushed by food crisis to restore hotline with South, analyst says
- Leaders have agreed to reopen communication channel cut off by Pyongyang last year
- The North is facing severe food shortages and ‘needs help’ from Seoul and Beijing
The reopening of the hotline was announced on Tuesday, after it was cut off by Pyongyang in June last year following a failed summit. North Korea also blew up a joint liaison office in its border town of Kaesong.
The North’s official KCNA news agency on Tuesday said leaders of the two countries had agreed to “make a big stride in recovering mutual trust”.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in had called for the hotline to be restored and for talks aimed at dismantling the North’s nuclear and missile programmes. According to the South’s presidential office, the countries’ leaders have exchanged several personal letters since April, and the two sides agreed to rebuild trust and improve ties during a three-minute conversation on Tuesday.
China – the North’s biggest ally and trading partner – was notified earlier that the hotline would be restored in an effort to improve ties, according to a source in Beijing familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity.
01:27
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un describes nation’s food situation as ‘tense’
Zhou Chenming, a researcher with the Yuan Wang military science and technology institute in Beijing, said the bottom line was that North Korea needed food aid from the South and from China.
