The on-off relationship of South Korea and North Korea is now slowly being fixed.

The North Korean government now finally opened its communication with the South Korean government. This was after months of having no direct communication at all between the two Koreas.

N. Korea and S. Korea friends again?

As North Korea tests for missiles in their area, the country’s leader Kim Jong-un finally decided to open its line of communication to its Southern counterpart. In the report from CNN, the N. Korean leader said that “North Korea has no reasons to provoke or hurt the South.”

The said return of communication will start on Monday, Oct. 4, at 9 am local time. As explained, the restarting of their phone communication came after the country’s rubberstamp legislature issues.

As reported via BBC, their first phone call had already happened in the morning. The South Korean unification ministry confirmed the report.

They said that this was the first time since August that both Koreas have finally contacted each other.

“With the restoration of the South-North communication line, the government evaluates that a foundation for recovering inter-Korean relations has been provided,” the ministry said in a statement.

N. Korea poses warning

Despite what seemed like a friendly approach of N. Korea to S. Korea by opening line of communication, the North Korean government still posed a warning to their Southern counterpart.

Their state media reported that: “South Korean authority must deeply appreciate the meaning of resumption of North-South communication lines and repair the North-South relations and make active efforts to resolve important issues that are pre-requisites to opening a bright path forward.”

As reported before, the relationship between the two Koreas have not been very well for the past years.

In June 2020, the two countries’ connection with each other started to get uneasy after the North blew up a liaison office, located at the northern city of Kaesong, which functioned as a de facto embassy.

NPR reported that the North then accused the South Korean government of allowing defectors to stay in their country and damage the reputation of North Korea. Those activists reportedly sent anti-Pyongyang leaflets to North Korean regions.

After some time, both Koreas have finally reached an agreement to connect the phone communication again. In August, the agreement was supposed to happen.

Unfortunately, the North immediately removed the communication again. This was after their government reportedly found out that S. Korea has been helping the United States army with their military exercises.

Is this the final decision?

There were still no assurances whether N. Korea will finally get over its rival S. Korea. However, Lee Ho-ryung, a researcher at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses under the Ministry of National Defense in Seoul, believed that time would be different from before.

She said that the pandemic has caused a lot for North Korea. Thus, the communication was opened for their counterpart to seek possible help.

Despite that, she still believed that: “Even though North Korea has restored inter-Korean communication channels, I don’t think there will be any major change to their basic external policies or inter-Korean policies.”