N Korea, S Korea establish hotline ahead of summit

SEOUL: Diplomatic foes North and South Korea installed a direct phone line between their leaders on Friday as they prepare for the first summit since 2007 - and the connection was great, the South’s presidential office said.

South Korea’s presidential Blue House and North Korea’s State Affairs Commission tested the hot line for four minutes before South Korea’s Moon Jae-in and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un talk ahead of next week’s summit, the office said. “The call quality was very good and we felt like we got a call from our nextdoor neighbour,” South Korea’s director for the Government Situation Room, Youn Kun-young, told reporters. Moon will now be able to pick up his office phone to talk to Kim, instead of communicating through a hot line at the Joint Security Area in the border village of Panmunjom.

The plan was unveiled by the South’s National Security Adviser, Chung Eui-yong, after he met Kim last month in Pyongyang. North Korea and the South are technically at war because their conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.