North Korea unresponsive to routine inter-Korean liaison, military hotline calls for fourth day

According to the Seoul government, North Korea remained unresponsive to daily routine calls with South Korea via an inter-Korean liaison communication channel and a military hotline for the fourth consecutive day on Monday.

The North appears to have “unilaterally” cut off the liaison communication line, according to South Korea’s Unification Ministry, as the country has not answered routine calls since April 7, according to Yonhap News Agency.

The two Koreas are supposed to talk on the phone twice a day, at 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., through their joint liaison channel.

Weekend calls to the liaison hotline are not accepted.

According to the South’s Defence Ministry, calls to a military hotline went unanswered for the fourth day in a row on Monday.

According to the Unification Ministry, the North’s “unilateral” decision to close the liaison communication channel is more significant.

“While monitoring the situation, the government is reviewing how to respond (to the North’s move). It will not take long for us to issue an official stance,” the ministry’s spokesperson, Koo Byoung-sam, stated at a regular press conference.

It is unclear why the North continues to ignore such daily calls from the South.

Due to technical reasons, daily phone calls via inter-Korean communication channels went unanswered in the past.

Pyongyang did not respond to a regular hotline call in June, ostensibly due to technical issues caused by heavy rains.

The North restored the inter-Korean hotline in July 2021, about a year after cutting the contact channel in protest of Seoul activists’ leaflet campaigns critical of Pyongyang.

In August of that year, the country again did not respond to calls via the liaison line for about two months, ostensibly in protest of Seoul-Washington military exercises.