HELLO, YEAH IT’S BEEN AWHILE. NOT MUCH, HOW ’BOUT YOU? At 1:30 a.m. Washington time (3:30 p.m. in Korea), a phone line dormant for two years crackled to life with a brief exchange between North and South Korean technicians, who conducted a test of the hotline in the latest evidence of the slightest of thaws in the tensions between the two Koreas. The reestablishment of the cross-border communications link, established in 1971, comes as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has also accepted the South’s offer to conduct “high-level talks” on Jan. 9 in the Demilitarized Zone.
“Rocket man now wants to talk to South Korea for first time. Perhaps that is good news, perhaps not – we will see!,” tweeted President Trump yesterday on the news of the restoration of the border hotline. The hotline is basically just a set of phones between two buildings in the Panmunjom peace village, and for years most of the communication was just a daily comms check between low-level military officials stationed at the DMZ.
