ANN/THE KOREA HERALD – North Korea has refused to take regularly held, inter-Korean, military-to-military calls from South Korea for three days without explanation, South Korea’s Defence Ministry said on Sunday.
The two Koreas hold calls twice a day, in the morning and afternoon, via liaison and military hotlines. But North Korea has stopped answering regular calls across all inter-Korean communication channels since Friday morning. Inter-Korean military hotlines – which operate at 9am and 4pm seven days a week – have gone unanswered for the third consecutive day. North Korea did not respond to calls by the South Korean military respectively on Sunday morning and afternoon.
“Regular calls have not taken place for unknown reasons on North Korea’s side,” a South Korean military official said.
“We are keeping close tabs on the situation while staying open to all possibilities, including the malfunction of North Korea’s communication channels.”
The South Korean military also raised the possibility that the North could have been dodging the calls on purpose in an apparent protest against the South Korean government.
The two Koreas do not conduct routine daily calls through the liaison hotline during weekends. But South Korea’s Unification Ministry on Friday confirmed that North Korea was unresponsive to calls both in the morning and afternoon, adding that South Korea’s communication channel was functioning.
“North Korea’s continuing refusal to take calls via inter-Korean communication channels is seen as backlash against South Korea’s recent moves to ramp up pressures on North Korean human rights issues,” said professor Yang Moo-jin at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
Yang added that South Korea’s attempts to “raise the issue of North Korea’s illegal operations of vehicles in the Kaesong Industrial Complex amid heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula on the occasion of the recent South Korea-US combined military exercises”, may also be contributing to the situation.
Notably, North Korea’s silent treatment began the day after South Korea’s Unification Ministry on Thursday tried to send a written statement to North Korea through the communication line urging the North not to illegally operate South Korea-owned factories and vehicles at the now-shuttered Kaesong Industrial Complex.
