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.
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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.
“So it was time for Pyongyang to restore the hotline,” he said. “North Korea needs help – especially food, fuel and other goods so that it can deal with the impact of extreme weather and the pandemic.”
Leader Kim Jong-un has warned North Koreans to prepare for the “worst-ever situation”, and the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation estimates that North Korea is facing a food shortage of about 860,000 tonnes this year. It has long struggled with food shortages – a devastating famine in the 1990s is estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands of people in the country.
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The two Koreas have set up at least 49 hotlines since the 1970s. Seoul sees them as a way to prevent misunderstandings from unexpected military developments, especially along their shared, heavily fortified demilitarised zone. They are also used to arrange diplomatic meetings, coordinate air and sea traffic, facilitate humanitarian discussions, minimise impacts from natural disasters and cooperate on economic issues.
Liu Ming, a North Korea affairs analyst with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said the move would be welcomed by Beijing as an effort towards peace and stability on the Korean peninsula.
“Beijing always encourages Pyongyang to improve relations with Seoul,” Liu said. “And of course its biggest concern is how to get the North to denuclearise.”
Zhou from Yuan Wang noted that the reopened hotline could also improve relations between Beijing and Seoul. “They share common ground on the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula,” he said. “And neither wants to see the North collapse.”
