North Korea reopens border hotline after Trump ‘button’ boast

NORTH Korea reopened a long-closed border hotline with South Korea on Wednesday, hours after US President Donald Trump appeared to mock the North’s leader by saying he has a “bigger and more powerful” nuclear button than North Korea does.

The North’s decision to open the border phone line came a day after South Korea proposed high-level discussions amid a tense standoff over North Korea’s missile and nuclear programmes.

That followed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s New Year address in which he said he was open to speaking with the South and would consider sending a delegation to the Winter Olympics to be held just across the border in Pyeongchang in February.

US officials said Washington would not take any talks between North and South Korea seriously if they did not contribute to denuclearising North Korea. A State Department spokeswoman said North Korea “might be trying to drive a wedge of some sort”.

Mr Kim ordered the reopening of the hotline at the truce village of Panmunjom at 6.30am GMT on Wednesday, when South Korean officials at the border received a call from the North, the South’s unification ministry said in a text message.

Officials on both sides were checking the line and conducting a conversation for about 20 minutes, the contents of which were not disclosed by the ministry.

That gesture came only hours after Mr Trump, who has mocked Mr Kim as “Little Rocket Man”, again ridiculed the North Korean leader on Twitter.

“Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” Mr Trump tweeted.

Mr Trump and Mr Kim have exchanged a series of bellicose comments in recent months, raising alarm across the world, with the US president at times dismissing the prospect of a diplomatic solution to a crisis in which North Korea has threatened to destroy the United States.

While appearing to open the door to discussing taking part in the Winter Olympics, Mr Kim also warned that he would push ahead with “mass producing” nuclear warheads in defiance of UN sanctions.

The hotline with the South was shut down by North Korea in February 2016 in retaliation against the closing of a border factory town that was jointly operated by the two Koreas.