North Korea yesterday restored military communications lines with the South and reopened the border crossing to a joint industrial complex as tensions remained high ahead of an expected rocket launch.
The unification ministry in Seoul, which handles relations with Pyongyang, said hundreds of South Koreans were able to travel to and from the Seoul-funded Kaesong industrial estate nearly two weeks after the border was first shut.
“Border crossings resumed this morning. People are crossing the border into Kaesong,” a Unification Ministry spokesman said.
Pyongyang had cut the phone lines and sealed the border in protest at a joint US-South Korea military exercise, which it qualified as a prelude to war. The war games, which began on March 9, ended on Friday.
The phone lines are used to authorize crossings to and from Kaesong, just north of the border, which opened in 2005 as a symbol of reconciliation on the peninsula, where the North and South are still technically at war.
But operations there have been hampered on several occasions because of political tensions and analysts said the reopening of the border did not represent any significant easing in tensions.
Also yesterday, Pyongyang informed an international aviation network that it plans to close two air routes through its territory during a planned rocket launch next month, South Korea said.
The North says the rocket will send a satellite into space, but many regional powers are concerned it is a cover for a test of missile technology. The North is barred by a UN resolution from all ballistic activity.
The isolated regime told the Aeronautical Fixed Telecommunication Network it would close two routes through its airspace from April 4 to April 8 — the period it has set for the launch, South Korea’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority said. The international network links more than 190 countries to ensure the safety of civil aviation.
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