SEOUL — For the past year, the regular communication link between North and South Korea has been inactive, as North Korea continues to ignore calls from the South, signaling a period of heightened tensions between the two nations.
According to Yonhap News Agency, the breakdown in communication follows a long-standing practice of conducting twice-daily calls through liaison and military hotlines, a routine that was abruptly halted by North Korea on April 7, 2023. This cessation occurred shortly after South Korea urged Pyongyang to cease its unauthorized activities in the now-dormant Kaesong Industrial Complex. In the absence of these direct lines, South Korea's unification ministry, responsible for inter-Korean relations, has had to resort to making statements through the media to reach the North. Additionally, the military has communicated via the U.S.-led U.N. Command, which still maintains a communication line with North Korea and oversees activities within the Demilitarized Zone that divides the two countries.
Seoul has repeatedly called for the restoration of these communication lines to avert accidental military confrontations and to facilitate cooperation on humanitarian issues, such as rescue operations for ships lost at sea and responses to natural disasters. Despite previous instances where North Korea severed and later reestablished these hotlines — notably restoring them in July 2021 after a year-long disruption in 2020 due to protests against anti-Pyongyang leaflets, and reopening them in January 2018 after a nearly two-year hiatus protesting the closure of the Kaesong Industrial Complex — the prospects for reactivation currently appear bleak.
Recent statements from North Korea's leadership have further strained relations, with declarations in late 2022 and January 2023 framing South Korea as an "invariable principal enemy" and suggesting amendments to the North's constitution to formalize this stance. Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, noted that while in the past, communication channels were restored following the resolution of North Korea's grievances, the explicit designation of South Korea as a hostile nation in the North's constitution would make any future restoration of the hotline significantly more challenging.